Eloquence of the United States;

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

ELOQUENCE

THE UNITED STATES:.;

*

COMPILED

BY E. B. WILLISTO1N

IN FIVE VOLUMES.
VOL. V.

.

MIDDLETOWN, CONN.

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY E. & H. CLARK.

1827.

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF
MA DAVIS

L. 8.

DISTRICT OF CONNECTICUT, SS.

BE IT REMEMBERED, That on the seventeenth day of
July, in the fifty-second year of the Independence of the
United States of America, E. B. WILLISTON, of the said
District, hath deposited in this Office, the title of a Book, the right whereof
he claims as Author and Proprietor, in the words following — to wit :

"* •

" Eloquence of the United States : compiled by E. B. Williston, in Jive,
volumes"

In conformity to the Act of Congress of the United States, entitled, " An Act
for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of Maps, Charts and
Books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein
mentioned." — And also to the Act, entitled, " An Act supplementary to an Act,
entitled ' An Act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of
Maps, Charts and Books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies during
the times therein mentioned,' and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of
designing, engraving and etching historical and other prints."

CHA'S A. INGERSOLL,

Clerk of the District of Connecticut.
A true copy of Record, examined and sealed by me,

CHA'S A. INGERSOLL,

Clerk of the District of Connecticut.

.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME FIFTH.

Page.

Mr. WARREN'S Oration, at Boston, March 5, 1772, in
commemoration of the u Boston Massacre," . .

Mr. HANCOCK'S Oration, at Boston, March 5, 1774, . 17

Mr. WARREN'S Oration, at Boston, March 6, 1775, . . 30

Mr. WILSON'S Speech in the Convention for the Pro
vince of Pennsylvania, in vindication of the Colo
nies, January, 1775, 43

Mr. HENRY'S Speech in the Convention of Delegates

of Virginia, March 23, 1775, 60

Gov. LIVINGSTON'S Speech to the Legislature of the

State of New Jersey, 1777, 64

The Address of Congress to the Inhabitants of Great

Britain, from the pen of Mr. LEE, 1775, ... 81

Mr. PINKNEY'S Speech in the Assembly of Maryland,
on a petition for the relief of oppressed slaves,
1788, 92

Mr. ADAMS' Oration, at Boston, July 4, 1793, ... 99

WASHINGTON'S Farewell Address, 110

Mr. LEE'S Eulogy on Washington, at Washington,

1799, 129

Mr. AMES' Eulogy on Washington, at Boston, Feb
ruary 8, 1800, 139

Mr. MASON'S Eulogy on Washington, at New York,

February 22, 1800 159

Mr. ADAMS' Oration, at Plymouth, in commemoration
of the first landing of our ancestors, at that place,
December 22, 1802, 173

Mr. OTIS' Eulogy on Hamilton, at Boston, July 26,

1804 191

Mr. NOTT'S Discourse on the death of Hamilton, at

Albany, July 9, 1804, 207

Mr. RUSH'S Oration, at Washington, July 4, 1812, , 230

IV CONTENTS.

Mr. EVERETT'S Oration before the Society of Phi

Beta Kappa, at Cambridge, August 26, 1824, . . 262
Mr. WEBSTER'S Address at the laying the corner

stone of the Bunker Hill monument, 1825, . . . 299
Mr. SPRAGUE'S Oration, at Boston, July 4, 1825, . . 322
Mr. EVERETT'S Oration, at Cambridge, July 4. 1826, . 341
Mr. WEBSTER'S Eulogy on Adams and Jefferson,

at Boston, August 2, 1826, 374

Mr. STORY'S Discourse before the Phi Beta Kappa

Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1826, ». . . 415
Mr. WIRT'S Eulogy on Jefferson and Adams, at

"Washington, October 19, 1826, 454

Mr. CLINTON'S Oration before the New York Alpha of

the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Schenectady,
July 22,

July 22, 1823, 504

ORATION OF JOSEPH WARREN,

DELIVERED

AT BOSTON, MARCH 5, 1772, THE ANNIVERSARY OF
THE " BOSTON MASSACRE."*

WHEN we turn over the historic page, and trace
the rise and fall of states and empires, the mighty re
volutions which have so often varied the face of the
world strike our minds with solemn surprise, and we
are naturally led to endeavor to search out the causes
of such astonishing changes.

That man is formed for social life, is an observa
tion, which, upon our first inquiry, presents itself im
mediately to our view, and our reason approves that
wise and generous principle which actuated the first

* The "- Boston massacre," as it is generally called, took place
March 5, 1 770. Previous to this time, considerable animosity had
existed between the citizens of Boston and the British soldiers sta
tioned there, which had occasionally shown itself in quarrels and
mutual abuse.

On the evening of the 5th of March, an extensive disturbance oc
curred, in which a number of the citizens lost their lives. This
event was productive of the most important consequences. It was
every where represented as a cruel and barbarous outrage of an
armed soldiery, upon unoffending and unarmed citizens.

It wrought up to the highest pitch the spirit of opposition to the
British government, and increased the activity and energy of those
who were determined on resistance.

It afforded also, an opportunity for an exhibition of traits of cha
racter in the " rebellious colonists," which plainly proved that, with
them, the dictates of justice predominated over every other consi
deration : for the jury who tried the offenders, although burning
with resentment for the recent outrage, and incensed at the numer.
ous injuries of the British government, still acquitted all the offenders
of the charge of murder. The anniversary of this day was celebrat
ed for a number of years, but at length the practice was discontinu
ed. — COMPILER.

VOL v. 2

(3 MR. WARREN'S ORATION,

founders of civil government — an institution, which
hath its origin in the weakness of individuals, and hath
for its end, the strength and security of all: and so
long as the means of effecting this important end are
thoroughly known, and religiously attended to, govern
ment is one of the richest blessings to mankind, and
ought to be held in the highest veneration.

In young and new formed communities, the grand
design of this institution, is most generally understood,
and most strictly regarded. The motives which urged
to the social compact, cannot be at once forgotten,
and that equality which is remembered to have sub
sisted so lately among them, prevents those who are
clothed with authority, from attempting to invade the
freedom of their brethren ; or if such an attempt is
made, it prevents the community from suffering the
offender to go unpunished. Every member feels it to
be his interest and knows it to be his duty, to preserve
inviolate the constitution on which the public safety
depends,* and he is equally ready to assist the magis
trate in the execution of the laws, and the subject in
defence of his right ; and so long as this noble attach
ment to a constitution, founded on free and benevolent
principles, exists in full vigor, in any state, that state
must be flourishing and happy.

It was this noble attachment to a free constitution,
which raised ancient Rome, from the smallest begin
nings, to that bright summit of happiness and glory, to
which she arrived ; and it was the loss of this which
plunged her from that summit into the black gulf of
infamy and slavery. It was this attachment which in
spired her senators with wisdom; it was this which
glowed in the breasts of her heroes ; it was this which
guarded her liberties and extended her dominions,
gave peace at home, and commanded respect abroad.
And when this decayed, her magistrates lost their reve-

* Omnes ordines ad conservandam rempublicam, mente, volunr
tate, studio, virtute, voce, consentiunt. — CICERO.

AT BOSTON, MARCH 5, 1772. 7

rence for justice and the laws, and degenerated into
tyrants arid oppressors ; her senators, forgetful of their
dignity, and seduced by base corruption, betrayed
their country ; her soldiers, regardless of their relation
to the community, and urged only by the hopes of
plunder and rapine, unfeelingly committed the most
flagrant enormities ; and, hired to the trade of death,
with relentless fury they perpetrated the most cruel
murders, whereby the streets of imperial Rome were
drenched with her noblest blood. Thus this empress
of the world lost her dominions abroad, and her in-
habitants, dissolute in their manners, at length became
contented slaves; and she stands, to this day, the
scorn and derision of nations, and a monument of
this eternal truth, that public happiness depends on a
virtuous and unshaken attachment to a free consti
tution.

It was this attachment to a constitution, founded on
free and benevolent principles, which inspired the first
settlers of this country. They saw, with grief, the dar
ing outrages committed on the free constitution of
their native land ; they knew, that nothing but a civil
war could, at that time, restore its pristine purity.
So hard was it to resolve to imbrue their-hands in the
blood of their brethren, that they chose rather to quit
their fair possessions and seek another habitation in a
distant clime. When they came to this new world,
which they fairly purchased of the Indian natives, the
only rightful proprietors, they cultivated the then bar
ren soil, by their incessant labor, and defended their
dear-bought possessions with the fortitude of the
Christian, and the bravery of the hero.

After various struggles, which, during the tyrannic
reigns of the house of Stuartr were constantly kept up
between right and wrong, between liberty and slavery,
the connexion between Great Britain and this colony
was settled in the reign of king William and queen
Mary, by a compact, the conditions of which were ex
pressed in a charter ; by which all the liberties and
immunities of British subjects, were confirmed to this

8 MR. WARREN'S ORATION

province, as fully and as absolutely as they possibly
could be, by any human instrument, which can be de
vised. And it is undeniably true, that the greatest
and most important right of a British subject is, that
he shall be governed by no laws but those to which he
either in person, or by his representative, hath given
his consent : and this, I will venture to assert, is the
grand basis of British freedom ; it is interwoven with
the constitution ; and whenever this is lost, the consti
tution must be destroyed.

The British constitution, (of which ours is a copy,)
is a happy compound of the three forms, (under some
of which all governments may be ranged,) viz., monar
chy, aristocracy and democracy. Of these three the
British legislature is composed, and without the con
sent of each branch, nothing can carry with it the
force of a law. But when a law is to be passed for
raising a tax, that law can originate only in the demo
cratic branch, which is the house of commons in Bri
tain, and the house of representatives here. The
reason is obvious : they and their constituents are to
pay much the largest part of it ; but as the aristocratic
branch, which, in Britain, is the house of lords, and in
this province, the council, are also to pay some part,
their consent is necessary ; and as the monarchic
branch, which, in Britain, is the king, and with us,
either the king in person, or the governor whom he
shall be pleased to appoint to act in his stead, is sup
posed to have a just sense of his own interest, which
is that of all the subjects in general, his consent is
also necessary, and when the consent of these three
branches is obtained, the taxation is most certainly
legal.

Let us now allow ourselves a few moments to exa
mine the late acts of the British parliament for taxing
America. Let us, with candor, judge, whether they
are constitutionally binding upon us : if they are, in
the name of justice let us submit to them, without one
murmuring word.

First, I would ask, whether the members of the Bri-

AT BOSTON, MARCH 5, 1772. 9

tish house of commons are the democracy of this pro
vince ? If they are, they are either the people of this
province, or are elected by the people of this province,
to represent them, and have, therefore, a constitutional
right to originate a bill for taxing them : it is most
certain they are neither, and, therefore, nothing done
by them can be said to be done by the democratic
branch of our constitution. I would next ask, whether
the lords, who compose the aristocratic branch of the
legislature, are peers of America ? I never heard it
was, (even in those extraordinary times,) so much as
pretended ; and if they are not, certainly no act of
theirs can be said to be the act of the aristocratic
branch of our constitution. The power of the mo
narchic branch we, with pleasure, acknowledge re
sides in the king, who may act either in person or by
his representative ; and \ freely confess, that I can see no
reason why a proclamation for raising taxes in America,
issued by the king's sole authority, would not be equal
ly consistent with our own constitution, and, therefore,
equally binding upon us, with the late acts of the Bri
tish parliament for taxing us; for it is plain, that if
there is any validity in those acts, it must arise alto
gether from the monarchical branch of the legislature.
And I further think, that it would be at least as equita
ble; for I do not conceive it to be of the least im
portance to us, by whom our property is taken away,
so long as it is taken without our consent ; and I am
very much at a loss to know, by what figure of rheto
ric, the inhabitants of this province can be called free
subjects, when they are obliged to obey, implicitly,
such laws as are made for them by men three thou
sand miles off, whom they know not, and whom they
never empowered to act for them ; or how they can be
said to have property, when a body of men, over
whom they have not the least control, and who are not
in any way accountable to them, shall oblige them to
deliver up any part, or the whole of their substance,
without even asking their consent. And yet, whoever

10 MR. WARREN'S ORATION,

pretends, that the late acts of the British parliament,
for taxing America, ought to be deemed binding upon
us, must admit, at once, that we are absolute slaves,
and have no property of our own ; or else, that we
may be freemen, and, at the same time, under a ne
cessity of obeying the arbitrary commands of those
over whom we have no control or influence, and that
we may have property of our own, which is entirely at
the disposal of another. Such gross absurdities, I be
lieve, will not be relished in this enlightened age : and
it can be no matter of wonder, that the people quickly
perceived, and seriously complained of the inroads
which these acts must unavoidably make upon their
liberty, and of the hazard to which their whole pro
perty is by them exposed. For, if they may be taxed
without their consent, even in the smallest trifle, they
may also, without their consent, be deprived of every
thing they possess, although never so valuable, never
so dear. Certainly it never entered the hearts of our
ancestors, that, after so many dangers in this then
desolate wilderness, their hard-earned property should
be at the disposal of the British parliament. And as it
was soon found, that this taxation could not be sup
ported by reason and argument, it seemed necessary,
that one act of oppression should be enforced by an
other, and, therefore, contrary to our just rights as
possessing, or at least having a just title to possess, all
the liberties and immunities of British subjects, a
standing army was established among us, in time of
peace ; and evidently for the purpose of effecting that,
which it was one principal design of the founders of the
constitution to prevent, (when they declared a stand
ing army, in time of peace, to be against law,) name
ly, for the enforcement of obedience to acts, which,
upon fair examination, appeared to be unjust and un
constitutional.

The ruinous consequences of standing armies to
free communities, may be seen in the histories of Sy
racuse. Rome and many other once flourishing states ;

AT BOSTON, MARCH 5, 1772. 1 1

some oi" which have now scarce a name ! Their bane
ful influence is most suddenly felt, when they are plac
ed in populous cities : for, by a corruption of morals,
the public happiness is immediately affected ; and that
this is one of the effects of quartering troops in a po
pulous city, is a truth, to which many a mourning pa
rent, many a lost, despairing child in this metropolis,
must bear a very melancholy 'testimony. Soldiers are
also taught to consider arms as the only arbiters by
which every dispute is to be decided between con
tending states ; they are instructed implicitly to obey
their commanders, without inquiring into the justice
of the cause they are engaged to support: hence it is,
that they are ever to be dreaded as the ready engines
of tyranny and oppression. And it is too observable,
that they are prone to introduce the same mode of de
cision in the disputes of individuals ; and from thence
have often arisen great animosities between them and
the inhabitants, who, whilst in a naked, defenceless
state, are frequently insulted and abused by an armed
soldiery. And this will be more especially the case,
when the troops are informed that the intention of
their being stationed in any city, is to overawe the in
habitants. That this was the avowed design of sta
tioning an armed force in this town, is sufficiently
known ; and we, my fellow-citizens, have seen, we
have felt the tragical effects ! — the fatal fifth of March,
1770, can never be forgotten. The horrors of that
dreadful night, are but too deeply impressed on our
hearts. Language is too feeble to paint the emotion
of our souls, when our streets were stained with the
blood of our brethren ; when our ears were wounded
by the groans of the dying, and our eyes were torment
ed with the sight of the mangled bodies of the dead ;
when our alarmed imagination presented to our views
our houses wrapped in flames, our children subjected
to the barbarous caprice of the 'raging soldiery, our
beauteous virgins exposed to all the insolence of un
bridled passion, our virtuous wives, endeared to us by

12 MR. WARREiN'S ORATION,

every tender tie, falling a sacrifice to worse than bru
tal violence, and perhaps, like the famed Lucretia,
distracted with anguish and despair, ending their
wretched lives by their own fair hands. When we be
held the authors of our distress parading in our streets,
or drawn up in a regular battalia, as though in a hos
tile city, our hearts beat to arms ; we snatched our
weapons, almost resolved, by one decisive stroke, to
avenge the death of our slaughtered brethren, and to
secure from future danger, all that we held most dear.
But propitious heaven forbade the bloody carnage, and
saved the threatened victims of our too keen resent
ment — not by their discipline, not by their regular ar
ray; no, it was royal George's livery that proved their
shield — it was that which turned the pointed engines
of destruction from their breasts. The thoughts of
vengeance, were soon buried in our inbred affection to
Great Britain, and calm reason dictated a method of
removing the troops more mild than an immediate re
course to the sword. With united efforts you urged
the immediate departure of the troops from the town;
you urged it, with a resolution which ensured success ;
you obtained your wishes, and the removal of the
troops was effected, without one drop of. their blood
being shed by the inhabitants.

The immediate actors in the tragedy of that night,
were surrendered to justice. It is not mine to say
how far they were guilty. They have been tried by
the country and acquitted of murder ! and they are
not to be again arraigned at an earthly bar. But
surely the men who have promiscuously scattered
death amidst the innocent inhabitants of a populous
city, ought to see well to it, that they be prepared to
stand at the bar of an omniscient judge ! and all who
contrived or encouraged the stationing troops in this
place, have reasons, of eternal importance, to reflect
with deep contrition, on their base designs, and hum
bly to repent of their impious machinations.

The infatuation which hath seemed, for a number

AT BOSTON, MARCH 5, 1772. 13

of years, to prevail in the British councils, with regard
to us, is truly astonishing ! What can be proposed by
the repeated attacks made upon our freedom, I really
cannot surmise: even leaving justice and humanity
out of question. I do not know one single advantage,
which can arise to the British nation, from our being
enslaved. I know not of any gains, which can be
wrung from us by oppression, which they may not ob
tain from us by our own consent, in the smooth chan
nel of commerce. We wish the wealth and prosperity
of Britain; we contribute largely to both. Doth what
we contribute lose all its value, because it is done vo
luntarily ? The amazing increase of riches to Bri
tain, the great rise of the value of her lands, the flour
ishing state of her navy, are striking proofs of the ad
vantages derived to her from her commerce with the
colonies ; and it is our earnest desire that she may
still continue to enjoy the same emoluments, until her
streets are paved with American gold ; only, let us
have the pleasure of calling it our own, whilst it is in
our own hands. But this, it seems, is too great a favor ;
we are to be governed by the absolute command of
others ; our property is to be taken away without our
consent ; if we complain, our complaints are treated
with contempt ; if we assert our rights, that assertion
is deemed insolence ; if we humbly offer to submit the
matter to the impartial decision of reason, the sword
is judged the most proper argument to silence our
murmurs ! But this cannot long be the case : surely
the British nation will not suffer the reputation of their
justice and their honor, to be thus sported away by a
capricious ministry. No, they will in a short time
open their eyes to their true interest ; they nourish in
their own breasts, a noble love of liberty; they hold
her dear, and they know that all, who have once pos
sessed her charms, had rather die than suffer her to
be torn from their embraces. They are also sensible
that Britain is so deeply interested in the prosperity of
the colonies, that she must eventually feel every wound
VOL. v, 3

J4 MR. WARREN'S ORATION,

given to their freedom ; they cannot be ignorant that
more dependence may be placed on the affections of
a brother, than on the forced service of a slave : they
must approve your efforts for the preservation of your
rights ; from a sympathy of soul they must pray for
your success ; arid I doubt not but they will, ere long,
exert themselves effectually, to redress your griev
ances. Even in the dissolute reign of king Charles II.
when the house of commons impeached the earl of
Clarendon, of high treason, the first article on which
they founded their accusation was, that " he had de
signed a standing army to be raised, arid to govern
the kingdom thereby." And the eighth article was,
that " he had introduced an arbitrary government
into his majesty's plantation." A terrifying example
to those who are now forging chains for this country.
You have, my friends and countrymen, frustrated
the designs of your enemies, by your unanimity and
fortitude: it was your union and determined spirit
which expelled those troops, who polluted your streets
with innocent blood. You have appointed this anni
versary as a standard memorial of the bloody conse
quences of placing an armed force in a populous city,
and of your deliverance from the dangers which then
seemed to hang over your heads ; and I am confident
that you never will betray the least want of spirit when
called upon to guard your freedom. None but they,
who set a just value upon the blessings of liberty, are
worthy to enjoy her — your illustrious fathers were her
zealous votaries — when the blasting frowns of tyranny
drove her from public view, they clasped her in their
arms ; they cherished her in their generous bosoms ;
they brought her safe over the rough ocean, and fixed
her seat in this then dreary wilderness ; they nursed
her infant age with the most tender care ; for her sake,
they patiently bore the severest hardships ; for her
support, they underwent the most rugged toils ; in her
defence, they boldly encountered the most alarming
dangers : neither the ravenous beasts that ranged the

AT BOSTON, MARCH 5, 1772. 15

woods for prey, nor the more furious savages of the
wilderness, could damp their ardor ! Whilst with one
hand they broke the stubborn glebe, with the other
they grasped their weapons, ever ready to protect her
from danger. No sacrifice, not even their own blood,
was esteemed too rich a libation for her altar ! God
prospered their valor ; they preserved her brilliancy
unsullied ; they enjoyed her whilst they lived, and dy
ing, bequeathed the dear inheritance to your care.
And as they left you this glorious legacy, they have
undoubtedly transmitted to you some portion of their
noble spirit, to inspire you with virtue to merit her,
and courage to preserve her. You surely cannot, with
such examples before your eyes, as every page of the
history of this country affords,* suffer your liberties to
be ravished from you by lawless force, or cajoled away
by flattery and fraud.

The voice of your father's blood cries to you from
the ground, my sons scorn to be slaves ! In vain
we met the frowns of tyrants — in vain we crossed
the boisterous ocean, found a new world, and pre
pared it for the happy residence of liberty— in vain
we toiled — in vain we fought — we bled in vain, if
you, our offspring, want valor to repel the assaults of
her invaders ! Stain not the glory of your worthy an
cestors, but like them, resolve never to part with your
birth-right; be wise in your deliberations, and deter
mined in your exertions for the preservation of your
liberties. Follow not the dictates of passion, but en
list yourselves under the sacred banner of reason;
use every method in your power to secure your rights ;
at least prevent the curses of posterity from being
heaped upon your memories.

If you, with united zeal and fortitude, oppose the
torrent of oppression; if you feel the true fire of pa
triotism burning in your breasts : if you, from your

* At simul heroum laudes, et facta parentis
Jamlegere, et quae sit poteris cognoscere virtus. — Virg.

16 MR. WARREN'S ORATION, &c.

souls, despise the most gaudy dress that slavery can
wear; if you really prefer the lonely cottage, (whilst
blest with liberty,) to gilded palaces, surrounded with
the ensigns of slavery, you may have the fullest assur
ance that tyranny, with her whole accursed train, will
hide their hideous heads in confusion, shame and
despair. If you perform your part, you must have the
strongest confidence, that the same Almighty Being
who protected your pious and venerable forefathers,
who enabled them to turn a barren wilderness into
a fruitful field, who so often made bare his arm for
their salvation, will still be mindful of you, their off
spring.

May this Almighty Being, graciously preside in all
our councils. May he direct us to such measures as
he himself shall approve, and be pleased to bless.
May we ever be a people favored of God. May our
land be a land of liberty, the seat of virtue, the asylum
of the oppressed, a name and a praise in the whole
earth, until the last shock of time shall bury the
empires of the world in one common undistinguish
ed ruin !

ORATION OF JOHN HANCOCK,

DELIVERED

AT BOSTON, MARCH 5, 1774, THE ANNIVERSARY OF
THE " BOSTON MASSACRE."*

Men, Brethren, Fathers and Fellow-Countrymen,

THE attentive gravity, the venerable appearance of
this crowded audience ; the dignity which I behold in
the countenances of so many in this great assembly ;
the solemnity of the occasion upon which we have met
together, joined to a consideration of the part I am to
take in the important business of this day, fill me with
an awe hitherto unknown, and heighten the sense
which I have ever had, of my unworthiness to fill this
sacred desk. But, allured by the call of some of my
respected fellow-citizens, with whose request it is al
ways my greatest pleasure to comply, I almost forgot
my want of ability to perform what they required. In
this situation I find my only support, in assuring my
self that a generous people will not severely censure
what they know was well intended, though its want of
merit should | prevent their being able to applaud it.
And I pray that my sincere attachment to the interest
of my country, and hearty detestation of every design
formed against her liberties, may be admitted as some
apology for my appearance in this place.

I have always, from my earliest youth, rejoiced in
the felicity of my fellow-men ; and have ever consider
ed it as the indispensable duty of every member of
society to promote, as far as in him lies, the prosperity
of every individual, but more especially of the com
munity to which he belongs ; and also, as a faithful
subject of the state, to use his utmost endeavors to de-

* See page 5th.

18 MR, HANCOCK'S ORATION,

tect, and having detected, strenuously to oppose every
traitorous plot which its enemies may devise for its de
struction. Security to the persons and properties of
the governed, is so obviously the design and end of
civil government, that to attempt a logical proof of it,
would be like burning tapers at noonday, to assist the
sun in enlightening the world ; and it cannot be either
virtuous or honorable, to attempt to support a govern
ment, of which this is not the great and principal basis ;
and it is to the last degree vicious and infamous to at
tempt to support a government which manifestly tends
to render the persons and properties of the governed in
secure. Some boast of being friends to government ; I
am a friend to righteous government, to a government
founded upon the principles of reason and justice;
but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to
tyranny. Is the present system, which the British ad
ministration have adopted for the government of the
colonies, a righteous government — or is it tyranny?
Here suffer me to ask, (and would to heaven there
could be an answer,) what tenderness, what regard,
respect or consideration has Great Britain shown, in
their late transactions, for the security of the persons
or properties of the inhabitants of the colonies ? Or
rather what have they omitted doing to destroy that
security ? They have declared, that they have ever
had, and of right ought ever to have, full power to
make laws of sufficient validity to bind the colonies in
all cases whatever. They have exercised this pretend
ed right by imposing a tax upon us without our con
sent; and lest we should show some reluctance at
parting with our property, her fleets and armies are sent
to enforce their mad pretensions. The town of Bos
ton, ever faithful to the British crown, has been invest
ed by a British fleet: the troops of George the III.
have crossed the wide Atlantic, not to engage an ene
my, but to assist a band of traitors in trampling on the
rights and liberties of his most loyal subjects in Ame
rica — those rights and liberties which, as a father, he
ought ever to regard, and as a king, he is bound, in

AT BOSTON, MARCH 5, 1774. 19

honor, to defend from violation, even at the risk of his
own life.

Let not the history of the illustrious house of Bruns
wick inform posterity, that a king, descended from
that glorious monarch, George the II., once sent his
British subjects to conquer and enslave his subjects in
America. But be perpetual infamy entailed upon that
villain who dared to advise his master to such execra
ble measures ; for it was easy to foresee the conse
quences which so naturally followed upon sending
troops into America, to enforce obedience to acts of
the British parliament, which neither God nor man
ever empowered them to make. It was reasonable to
expect, that troops, who knew the errand they were
sent upon, would treat the people whom they were to
subjugate, with a cruelty and haughtiness, which too
often buries the honorable character of a soldier, in
the disgraceful name of an unfeeling ruffian. The
troops, upon their first arrival, took possession of our
senate-house, and pointed their cannon against the
judgment-hall, and even continued them there whilst
the supreme court of judicature for this province was
actually sitting to decide upon the lives and fortunes
of the king's subjects. Our streets nightly resounded
with the noise of riot and debauchery ; our peaceful
citizens were hourly exposed to shameful insults, and
often felt the effects of their violence and outrage.
But this was not all : as though they thought it not
enough to violate our civil rights, they endeavored to
deprive us of the enjoyment of our religious privileges;
to viciate our morals, and thereby render us deserving
of destruction. Hence the rude din of arms which
broke in upon your solemn devotions in your temples,
on that day hallowed by heaven, and set apart by God
himself for his peculiar worship. Hence, impious
oaths and blasphemies so often tortured your unac
customed ear. Hence, all the arts which idleness and
luxury could invent, were used to betray our youth of
one sex into extravagance and effeminacy, and of the

20 MR. HANCOCK'S ORATION,

other, to infamy and ruin ; and did they not succeed
but too well ? Did not a reverence for religion sensibly
decay? Did not our infants almost learn to lisp out
curses before they knew their horrid import ? Did not
our youth forget they were Americans, and regardless
of the admonitions of the wise and aged, servilely copy
from their tyrants those vices which finally must over
throw the empire of Great Britain ? And must I be
compelled to acknowledge, that even the noblest,
fairest part of all the lower creation, did not entirely
escape the cursed snare ? When virtue has once
erected her throne within the female breast, it is upon
so solid a basis that nothing is able to expel the hea
venly inhabitant. But have there not been some, few
indeed, I hope, whose youth and inexperience have
rendered them a prey to wretches, whom, upon the
least reflection, they would have despised and hated
as foes to God and their country ? I fear there have
been some such unhappy instances, or why have I seen
an honest father clothed with shame ; or why a virtuous
mother drowned in tears ?

But I forbear, and come reluctantly to the transac
tions of that dismal night, when in such quick succes
sion we felt the extremes of grief, astonishment and
rage ; when heaven in anger, for a dreadful moment,
suffered hell to take the reins ; when satan with his
chosen band opened the sluices of New England's
blood, and sacrilegiously polluted our land with the
dead bodies of her guiltless sons ! Let this sad tale of
death never be told without a tear : let not the heaving
bosom cease to burn with a manly indignation at the
barbarous story, through the long tracts of future
time : let every parent tell the shameful story to his
listening children until tears of pity glisten in their
eyes and boiling passions shake their tender frames ;
and whilst the anniversary of that ill-fated night is
kept a jubilee in the grim court of pandaemonium, let
all America join in one common prayer to heaven,
that the inhuman, unprovoked murders of the fifth of

AT BOSTON, MARCH 5, 1774. 21

March, 1770, planned by Hillsborough, and a knot of
treacherous knaves in Boston, and executed by the
cruel hand of Preston and his sanguinary coadjutors^
may ever stand on history without a parallel. But
what, my countrymen, withheld the ready arm of ven
geance from executing instant justice on the vile as
sassins? Perhaps you feared promiscuous carnage
might ensue, and that the innocent might share the
fate of those who had performed the infernal deed.
But were not all guilty ? Were you not too tender of
the lives of those who came to fix a yoke on your
necks ? But I must not too severely blame a fault,
which great souls only can commit. May that mag
nificence of spirit which scorns the low pursuits of
malice, may that generous compassion which often
preserves from ruin, even a guilty villain, forever actu
ate the noble bosoms of Americans ! But let not the
miscreant host vainly imagine that we feared their
arms. No ; them we despised ; we dread nothing but
slavery. Death is the creature of a poltroon's brains ;
'tis immortality to sacrifice ourselves for the salva
tion of our country. We fear not death. That gloomy
night, the palefaced moon, and the affrighted stars
that hurried through the sky, can witness that we fear
not death. Our hearts which, at the recollection, glow
with rage that four revolving years have scarcely
taught us to restrain, can witness that we fear not
death ; arid happy it is for those who dared to insult us.
that their naked bones are not now piled up an ever
lasting monument of Massachusetts' bravery. But
they retired, they fled, and in that flight they found
their only safety. We then expected that the hand of
public justice would soon inflict that punishment upon
the murderers, which, by the laws of God and man>
they had incurred. But let the unbiassed pen of a Ro
bertson, or perhaps of some equally famed American^
conduct this trial before the great tribunal of succeed^-
ing generations. And though the murderers may es
cape the just resentment of an enraged people : though
VOL. v. 4

22 UK- HANCOCK'S ORATION,

drowsy justice, intoxicated by the poisonous draught
prepared for her cup, still nods upon her rotten seat,
yet be assured, such complicated crimes will meet
their due reward. Tell me, ye bloody butchers ! ye
villains high and low ! ye wretches who contrived, as
well as you who executed the inhuman deed ! do you
not feel the goads and stings of conscious guilt pierce
through your savage bosoms ? Though some of you
may think yourselves exalted to a height that bids de
fiance to human justice ; arid others shroud yourselves
beneath the mask of hypocrisy, and build your hopes of
safety on the low arts of cunning, chicanery and false
hood ; yet do you not sometimes feel the gnawings of
that worm which never dies ? Do not the injured
shades of Maverick, Gray, Caldwell, Attucks and Carr,
attend you in your solitary walks ; arrest you even in the
midst of your debaucheries, and fill even your dreams
with terror ? But if the unappeased manes of the
dead should not disturb their murderers, yet surely
even your obdurate hearts must shrink, and your guilty
blood must chill within your rigid veins, when you be
hold the miserable Monk, the wretched victim of your
savage cruelty. Observe his tottering knees, which
scarce sustain his wasted body ; look on his haggard
eyes ; mark well the death-like paleness on his fallen
cheek, and tell me, does not the sight plant daggers in
your souls ? Unhappy Monk ! cut oft', in the gay morn
of manhood, -from all the joys which sweeten life,
doomed to drag on a pitiful existence, without even a
hope to taste the pleasures of returning health ! Yet
Monk, thou livest not in vain ; thou livest a warning to
thy country, which sympathizes with thee in thy suffer
ings ; thou livest an affecting, an alarming instance of
the unbounded violence which lust of power, assisted
by a standing army, can lead a traitor to commit.

For us he bled, and now languishes. The wounds,
by which he is tortured to a lingering death, were aim
ed at our country ! Surely the meek-eyed charity can
never behold such sufferings with indifference. Nor

AT BOSTON, MARCH 5, 1774. 23

can her lenient hand forbear to pour oil and wine into
these wounds, and to assuage, at least, what it can
not heal.

Patriotism is ever united with humanity and com
passion. This noble affection, which impels us to sa
crifice every thing dear, even life itself, to our country,
involves in it a common sympathy and tenderness for
every citizen, and must ever have a particular feeling
for one who suffers in a public cause. Thoroughly
persuaded of this, I need not add a word to engage
your compassion and bounty towards a fellow-citizen,
who, with long protracted anguish, falls a victim to
the relentless rage of our common enemies.

Ye dark designing knaves, ye murderers, parricides !
how dare you tread upon the earth, which has drank
in the blood of slaughtered innocents, shed by your
wicked hands ? How dare you breathe that air which
wafted to the ear of heaven the groans of those who
fell a sacrifice to your accursed ambition ? But if the
laboring earth doth not expand her jaws ; if the air
you breathe is not commissioned to be the minister of
death; yet, hear it and tremble! The eye of heaven
penetrates the darkest chambers of the soul, traces the
leading clue through all the labyrinths which your in
dustrious folly has devised; and you, however you
may have screened yourselves from human eyes, must
be arraigned, must lift your hands, red with the blood
of those whose death you have procured, at the tre
mendous bar of God !

But I gladly quit the gloomy theme of death, and
leave you to improve the thought of that important
day, when our naked souls must stand before that Be
ing, from whom nothing can be hid. I would not dwell
too long upon the horrid effects which have already
followed from quartering regular troops in this town.
Let our misfortunes teach posterity to guard against
such evils for the future. Standing armies are some
times, (I would by no means say generally, much less
universally,) composed of persons who have rendered

24 MR. HANCOCK'S ORATION,

themselves unfit to live in civil society ; who have no
other motives of conduct than those which a desire of
the present gratification of their passions suggests ;
who have no property in any country ; men who have
given up their own liberties, and envy those who enjoy
liberty ; who are equally indifferent to the glory of a
George or a Louis ; who, for the addition of one penny
a day to their wages, would desert from the Christian
cross, and fight under the crescent of the Turkish sul
tan. From such men as these, what has not a state to
fear ? With such as these, usurping Caesar passed the
Rubicon ; with such as these, he humbled mighty
Rome, and forced the mistress of the world to own a
master in a traitor. These are the men whom scepter-
ed robbers now employ to frustrate the designs of God,
and render vain the bounties which his gracious hand
pours indiscriminately upon his creatures. By these,
the miserable slaves in Turkey, Persia, and many
other extensive countries, are rendered truly wretched,
though their air is salubrious, and their soil luxurious
ly fertile. By these, France and Spain, though blessed
by nature with all that administers to the convenience
of life, have been reduced to that contemptible state

in which they now appear ; and by these, Britain

but if I was possessed of the gift of prophecy,

I dare not, except by divine command, unfold the
leaves on which the destiny of that once powerful
kingdom is inscribed.

But since standing armies are so hurtful to a state,
perhaps my countrymen may demand some substitute,
some other means of rendering us secure against the
incursions of a foreign enemy. But can you be one
moment at a loss ? Will not a well disciplined militia
afford you ample security against foreign foes ? We
want not courage ; it is discipline alone in which we
are exceeded by the most formidable troops that ever
trod the earth. Surely our hearts flutter no more at
the sound of war, than did those of the immortal band
of Persia, the Macedonian phalanx, the invincible

AT BOSTON, MARCH 6, 1774. 25

Roman legions, the Turkish janissaries, the gens
tfarmes of France, or the well known grenadiers of
Britain. A well disciplined militia is a safe, an ho
norable guard to a community like this, whose inhabit
tants are by nature brave, and are laudably tenacious
of that freedom in which they were born. From a
well regulated militia, we have nothing to fear ; their
interest is the same with that of the state. When a
country is invaded, the militia are ready to appear in
its defence ; they march into the field with that forti
tude which a consciousness of the justice of their
cause inspires; they do not jeopard their lives for a
master who considers them only as the instruments of
his ambition, and whom they regard only as the daily
dispenser of the scanty pittance of bread and water.
No, they fight for their houses, their lands, for their
wives, their children ; for all who claim the tenderest
names, and are held dearest in their hearts ; they fight
pro arts et focis, for their liberty, and for themselves,
and for their God. And let it not offend, if I say, that
no militia ever appeared in more flourishing condition,
than that of this province now doth ; and pardon me-
if I say, of this town in particular. I mean not to
boast ; I would not excite envy but manly emulation.
We have all one common cause ; let it, therefore, be
our only contest, who shall most contribute to the se
curity of the liberties of America. And may the same
kind Providence which has watched over this country
from her infant state, still enable us to defeat our ene
mies. I cannot here forbear noticing the signal man
ner in which the designs of those, who wish not well to
us, have been discovered. The dark deeds of a treach
erous cabal, have been brought to public view. You
now know the serpents who, whilst cherished in your
bosoms, were darting their envenomed stings into the
vitals of the constitution. But the representatives of
the people have fixed a mark on these ungrateful mon
sters, which, though it may not make them so secure
as Cain of old, yet renders them at least as infamous.

26 MR. HANCOCK'S ORATION,

Indeed, it would be aflrontive to the tutelar deity of
this country, even to despair of saving it from all the
snares which human policy can lay.

True it is, that the British ministry have annexed a
salary to the office of the governor of this province, to
be paid out of a revenue, raised in America, without
our consent. They have attempted to render our
courts of justice the instruments of extending the au
thority of acts of the British parliament over this colo
ny, by making the judges dependent on the British ad
ministration for their support. But this people will
never be enslaved with their eyes open. The mo
ment they knew that the governor was not such a gov
ernor as the charter of the province points out, he
lost his power of hurting them. They were alarmed ;
they suspected him, have guarded against him, and he
has found that a wise and a brave people, when they
know their danger, are fruitful in expedients to es
cape it.

The courts of judicature, also, so far lost their digni
ty, by being supposed to be under an undue influence,
that our representatives thought it absolutely neces
sary to resolve that they were bound to declare, that
they would not receive any other salary besides that
which the general court should grant them; and if
they did not make this declaration, that it would be
the duty of the house to impeach them.

Great expectations were also formed from the artful
scheme of allowing the East India company to export
tea to America, upon their own account. This cer
tainly, had it succeeded, would have effected the pur
pose of the contrivers, and gratified the most sanguine
wishes of our adversaries. We soon should have
found our trade in the hands of foreigners, and taxes
imposed on every thing which we consumed; nor
would it have been strange, if, in a few years, a com
pany in London should have purchased an exclusive
right of trading to America. But their plot was soon
discovered. The people soon were aware of the poi~

AT BOSTON, MARCH, 5, 1774. 27

'

son which, with so much craft and subtilty, had been
concealed. Loss and disgrace ensued : and, perhaps
this long concerted master-piece of policy, may issue
in the total disuse of tea in this country, which will
eventually be the saving of the lives and the estates of
thousands. Yet while we rejoice that the adversary
has not hitherto prevailed against us, let us by no
means put off the harness. Restless malice, and dis
appointed ambition will still suggest new measures to
our inveterate enemies. Therefore, let us also be
ready to take the field whenever danger calls ; let us
be united and strengthen the hands of each other by
promoting a general union among us. Much has been
done by the committees of correspondence for this and
the other towns of this province, towards uniting the
inhabitants ; let them still go on arid prosper. Much
has been done by the committees of correspondence,
for the houses of assembly, in this and our sister colo
nies, for uniting the inhabitants of the whole continent,
for the security of their common interest. May suc
cess ever attend their generous endeavors. But per
mit me here to suggest a general congress of deputies,
from the several houses of assembly, on the continent,
as the most effectual method of establishing such an
union, as the present posture of our affairs require.
At such a congress, a firm foundation may be laid for
the security of our rights and liberties ; a system may
be formed for our common safety, by a strict adher
ence to which, we shall be able to frustrate any at
tempts to overthrow our constitution; restore peace
arid harmony to America, and secure honor and wealth
to Great Britain, even against the inclinations of her
ministers, whose duty it is to study her welfare ; and
we shall also free ourselves from those unmannerly
pillagers who impudently tell us, that they are licensed
by an act of the British parliament, to thrust their dirty
hands into the pockets of every American. But, I
trust, the happy time will come, when, with the besom
of destruction, those noxious vermin will be swept for
ever from the streets of Boston.

28 MR. HANCOCK'S ORATIOK,

Surely you never will tamely suffer this country to
be a den of thieves. Remember, my friends, from
whom you sprang. Let not a meanness of spirit, un
known to those whom you boast of as your fathers,
excite a thought to the dishonor of your mothers. I
conjure you, by all that is dear, by all that is honorable,
by all that is sacred, not only that ye pray, but that
ye act ; that, if necessary, ye fight, and even die, for
the prosperity of our Jerusalem. Break in sunder,
with noble disdain, the bonds with which the Philis
tines have bound you. Suffer not yourselves to be
betrayed, by the soft arts of luxury and effeminacy y
into the pit digged for your destruction. Despise the
glare of wealth. That people, who pay greater respect
to a wealthy villain, than to an honest, upright man in
poverty, almost deserve to be enslaved ; they plainly
show, that wealth, however it may be acquired, is.
in their esteem, to be preferred to virtue.

But I thank God, that America abounds in men who
are superior to all temptation, whom nothing can di
vert from a steady pursuit of the interest of their coun
try; who are at once its' ornament and safeguard.
And sure I am, I should not incur your displeasure, if
I paid a respect, so justly due to their much honored
characters, in this place. But when I name an Adams,
such a numerous host of fellow-patriots rush upon my
mind, that I fear it would take up too much of your
time, should I attempt to call over the illustrious roll.
But your grateful hearts will point you to the men;
and their revered names, in all succeeding times, shall
grace the annals of America. From them, let us. my
friends, take example ; from them, let us catch the di
vine enthusiasm ; and feel, each for himself, the god
like pleasure of diffusing happiness on all around us ;
of delivering the oppressed from the iron grasp of ty
ranny; of changing the hoarse complaints and bitter
moans of wretched slaves into those cheerful songs.
which freedom and contentment must inspire. There
is a heartfelt satisfaction in reflecting on our exertions
for the public weal, which all the sufferings an enrag-

AT BOSTON, MARCH 5, I77i. 29

ed tyrant can inflict, will never take away ; which the
ingratitude and reproaches of those whom we have
saved from ruin, cannot rob us of. The virtuous as-
serter of the rights of mankind merits a reward, which
even a want of success in his endeavors to save his
country, the heaviest misfortune which can befall a
genuine patriot, cannot entirely prevent him from re
ceiving.

I have the most animating confidence, that the pre
sent noble struggle for liberty ; will terminate glorious
ly for America. And let us play the man for our God,
and for the cities of our God ; while we are using
the means in our power, let us humbly commit our
righteous cause to the great Lord of the universe, who
loveth righteousness and hateth iniquity. And having
secured the approbation of our hearts, by a faithful and
unwearied discharge of our duty to our country, let us
joyfully leave our concerns in the hands of Him who
raiseth up and putteth down the empires and king
doms of the world as He pleases ; and with cheerful
submission to His sovereign will, devoutly say, " Al
though the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall
fruit be in the vines ; the labor of the olive shall fail,
and the field shall yield no meat ; the flock shall be cut
off from the fold, and there shall he no herd in the
stalls ; yet we will rejoice in the Lord, we will joy in
the God of our salvation."

VOL. \.

ORATION OF JOSEPH WARREN,

DELIVERED

AT BOSTON, MARCH 6, 1775, IN COMMEMORATION OF
THE « BOSTON MASSACRE."*

MY EVER HONORED FELLOW-CITIZENS,

IT is not without the most humiliating conviction of
my want of ability, that I now appear before you : but
the sense I have of the obligation I am under to obey
the calls of my country at all times, together with an
animating recollection of your indulgence, exhibited
upon so many occasions, has induced me, once more,
undeserving as I am, to throw myself upon that can
dor, which looks with kindness on the feeblest efforts
of an honest mind.

You will not now expect the elegance, the learning,
the fire, the enrapturing strains of eloquence, which
charmed you when a Lovell, a Church, or a Hancock
spake ; but you will permit me to say, that with a sin
cerity equal to theirs, I mourn over my bleeding coun
try. With them I weep at her distress, and with them
deeply resent the many injuries she has received from
the hands of cruel and unreasonable men.

That personal freedom is the natural right of every
man, and that property, or an exclusive right to dis
pose of what he has honestly acquired by his own la
bor, necessarily arises therefrom, are truths which
common sense has placed beyond the reach of con
tradiction. And no man or body of men can, without
being guilty of flagrant injustice, claim a right to dis
pose of the persons or acquisitions of any other man,
or body of men, unless it can be proved, that such a

* See page 5th.

JSLR. WARREN'S ORATION, &c. 31

right has arisen from some compact between the par-,
ties, in which it has been explicitly and freely granted.

If I may be indulged in taking a retrospective view
of the first settlement of our country, it will be easy to
determine with what degree of justice the late parlia
ment of Great Britain have assumed the power of
giving away that property, which the Americans have
earned by their labor.

Our fathers, having nobly resolved never to wear the
yoke of despotism, and seeing the European world, at
that time, through indolence and cowardice, falling a
prey to tyranny, bravely threw themselves upon the
bosom of the ocean, determined to find a place in
which they might enjoy their freedom, or perish in
the glorious attempt. Approving heaven beheld the
favorite ark dancing upon the waves, and graciously
preserved it until the chosen families were brought in
safety to these western regions. They found the
land swarming with savages, who threatened death
with every kind of torture. But savages, and death
with torture, were far less terrible than slavery. No
thing was so much the object of their abhorrence as
a tyrant's power. They knew it was more safe to
dwell with man, in his most unpolished state, than in
a country where arbitrary power prevails. Even an-r
archy itself, that bugbear held up by the tools of power*
(though truly to be deprecated,) is infinitely less dan
gerous to mankind than arbitrary government. An
archy can be but of a short duration ; for, when men are
at liberty to pursue that course which is more condu^
cive to their own happiness, they will soon come into
it ; and from the rudest state of nature, order and good
government must soon arise. But tyranny, when once
established, entails its curses on a nation to the latest
period of time ; unless some daring genius, inspired
by heaven, shall, unappalled by danger, bravely form
and execute the arduous design of restoring liberty
and life to his enslaved, murdered country.

The tools of power, in every age, have racked their

32 MR. WARREN'S ORATION,

inventions to justify the few in sporting with the hap
piness of the many; and, having found their sophistry
too weak to hold mankind in bondage, have impiously
dared to force religion, the daughter of the King of
heaven, to become a prostitute in the service of hell.
They taught, that princes, honored with the name of
Christian, might bid defiance to the founder of their
faith, might pillage pagan countries and deluge them
with blood, only because they boasted themselves to
be the disciples of that teacher, who strictly charged
his followers to do to others as they would that others
should do unto them.

This country having been discovered by an English
subject, in the year 1620, was (according to the sys
tem which the blind superstition of those times sup
ported,) deemed the property of the crown of England.
Our ancestors, when they resolved to quit their native
soil, obtained from king James, a grant of certain lands
in North America. This they probably did to silence
the cavils of their enemies, for it cannot be doubted,
but they despised the pretended right which he claim
ed thereto. Certain it is, that he might, with equal
propriety and justice, have made them a grant of the
planet Jupiter. And their subsequent conduct plainly
shows, that they were too well acquainted with hu
manity, and the principles of natural equity, to sup
pose, that the grant gave them any right to take pos
session ; they, therefore, entered into a treaty with the
natives, and bought from them the lands. Nor have
I ever yet obtained any information, that our ancestors
ever pleaded, or that the natives ever regarded the
grant from the English crown : the business was trans
acted by the parties in the same independent mariner,
that it would have been, had neither of them ever
known or heard of the island of Great Britain.

Having become the honest proprietors of the soil,
they immediately applied themselves to the cultiva
tion of it ; and they soon beheld the virgin earth teem
ing with richest fruits, a grateful recompense for their

AT BOSTON, MARCH 6, 1775. 33

unwearied toil. The fields began to wave with ripen
ing harvests, and the late barren wilderness was seen
to blossom like the rose. The savage natives saw,
with wonder, the delightful change, and quickly form
ed a scheme to obtain that by fraud or force, which na
ture meant as the reward of industry alone. But the
illustrious emigrants soon convinced the rude invaders,
that they were not less ready to take the field for bat
tle than for labor; and the insidious foe was driven
from their borders as often as he ventured to disturb
them. The crown of England looked with indiffer
ence on the contest ; our ancestors were left alone to
combat with the natives. Nor is there any reason to
believe, that it ever was intended by the one party, or
expected by the other, that the grantor should defend
and maintain the grantees in the peaceable posses
sion of the lands named in the patents. And it ap
pears plainly, from the history of those times, that
neither the prince nor the people of England, thought
themselves much interested in the matter. They had
not then any idea of a thousandth part of those advan
tages, which they since have, and we are most heartily
willing they should still continue to reap from us.

But when, at an infinite expense of toil and blood,
this widely extended continent had been cultivated
and defended ; when the hardy adventurers justly ex
pected, that they and their descendants should peacea
bly have enjoyed the harvest of those fields which
they had sown, and the fruit of those vineyards which
they had planted, this country was then thought wor
thy the attention of the British ministry; and the
only justifiable and only successful means of rendering
the colonies serviceable to Britain, were adopted. By
an intercourse of friendly offices, the two countries be
came so united in affection, that they thought not of
any distinct or separate interests, they found both
countries flourishing and happy. Britain saw her
commerce extended, and her wealth increased; her
Innds raised to an immense value : her fleets riding

34 MR. WARREN'S ORATION,

triumphant on the ocean; the terror of her arms
spreading to every quarter of the globe. The colo
nist found himself free, and thought himself secure :
he dwelt under his own vine, and under his own fig-
tree, and had none to make him afraid. He knew,
indeed, that by purchasing the manufactures of Great
Britain, he contributed to its greatness : he knew, that
all the wealth that his labor produced, centered in
Great Britain. But that, far from exciting his envy,
filled him with the highest pleasure; that thought sup
ported him in all his toils. When the business of the
day was past, he solaced himself with the contempla
tion, or perhaps entertained his listening family with
the recital of some great, some glorious transaction,
which shines conspicuous in the history of Britain :
or, perhaps, his elevated fancy led him to foretel, with
a kind of enthusiastic confidence, the glory, power and
duration of an empire which should extend from one
end of the earth to the other. He saw, or thought he
saw, the British nation risen to a pitch of grandeur,
which cast a veil over the Roman glory, and, ravish
ed with the preview, boasted a race of British kings,
whose names should echo through those realms where
Cyrus, Alexander, and the Caesars were unknown;
princes, for whom millions of grateful subjects redeem^
ed from slavery and pagan ignorance, should, with
thankful tongues, offer up their prayers and praises
to that transcendently great and beneficent being, " by
whom kings reign and princes decree justice."

These pleasing connexions might have continued ;
these delightsome prospects might have been every
day extended ; and even the reveries of the most warm
imagination might have been realized ; but, unhappily
for us, unhappily for Britain, the madness of an avari
cious minister of state, has drawn a sable curtain over
the charming scene, and in its stead has brought upon
the stage, discord, envy, hatred and revenge, with
civil war close in their rear.

Some demon, in an evil hour, suggested to a short-

AT BOSTON, MARCH 6, 1775. * 35

sighted tinancier the hateful project of transferring
the whole property of the king's subjects in America,
to his subjects in Britain. The claim of the British
parliament to tax the colonies, can never be supported
but by such a transfer ; for the right of the house of
commons of Great Britain, to originate any tax or
grant money, is altogether derived from their being
elected by the people of Great Britain to act for them ;
and the people of Great Britain cannot confer on their
representatives a right to give or grant any thing which
they themselves have not a right to give or grant per
sonally. Therefore, it follows, that if the members
chosen by the people of Great Britain, to represent
them in parliament, have, by virtue of their being so
chosen, any right to give or grant American property,
or to lay any tax upon the lands or persons of the co
lonists, it is because the lands and people in the colo
nies are, bona fide, owned by, and justly belonging to
the people of Great Britain. But, (as has been before
observed,) every man has a right to personal freedom;
consequently a right to enjoy what is acquired by his
own labor. And it is evident, that the property in this
country has been acquired by our own labor ; it is the
duty of the people of Great Britain, to produce some
compact in which we have explicitly given up to them
a right to dispose of our persons or property. Until
this is done, every attempt of theirs, or of those whom
they have deputed to act for them, to give or grant
any part of our property, is directly repugnant to every
principle of reason and natural justice. But I may
boldly say, that such a compact never existed, no, not
even in imagination. Nevertheless, the representa
tives of a nation, long famed for justice and the exer
cise of every noble virtue, have been prevailed on to
adopt the fatal scheme ; and although the dreadful
consequences of this wicked policy have already shak
en the empire to its centre, yet still it is persisted in.
Regardless of the voice of reason; deaf to the prayers
and supplications ; and unaffected with the flowing

36 MR. WARREN'S ORATION.

|

tears of suffering millions, the British ministry still hug
the darling idol ; and every rolling year affords fresh
instances of the absurd devotion with which they wor
ship it. Alas ! how has the folly, the distraction of
the British councils, blasted our swelling hopes, and
spread a gloom over this western hemisphere.

The hearts of Britons and Americans, which lately
felt the generous glow of mutual confidence and love,
now burn with jealousy and rage. Though but of yes
terday, I recollect (deeply affected at the ill-boding
change,) the happy hours that passed whilst Britain
and America rejoiced in the prosperity and greatness
of each other. Heaven grant those halcyon days may
soon return ! But now the Briton too often looks on
the American with an envious eye, taught to consider
his just plea for the enjoyment of his earnings, as the
effect of pride and stubborn opposition to the parent
country. Whilst the American beholds the Briton, as
the ruffian, ready first to take away his property, and
next, what is still dearer to every virtuous man, the li
berty of his country.

When the measures of administration had disgusted
the colonies to the highest degree, and the people of
Great Britain had, by artifice and falsehood, been ir
ritated against America, an army was sent over to en
force submission to certain acts of the British parlia
ment, which reason scorned to countenance, and which
placemen and pensioners were found unable to sup
port.

Martial law, and the government of a well regulat
ed city, are so entirely different, that it has always
been considered as improper to quarter troops in po
pulous cities ; frequent disputes must necessarily arise
between the citizen and the soldier, even if no previous
animosities subsist. And it is further certain, from a
consideration of the nature of mankind, as well as
from constant experience, that standing armies always
endanger the liberty of the subject. But when the
people, on the one part, considered the army as sent

*

AT BOSTON, MARCH 6, 17T«. * 37

to enslave them, and the army, on the other, were
taught to look on the people as in a state of rebellion,
it was but just to fear the most disagreeable conse
quences. Our fears, we have seen, were but too well
grounded.

The many injuries offered to the town, I pass over
in silence. I cannot now mark out the path which led
to that unequalled scene of horror, the sad remem
brance of which takes the full possession of my soul.
The sanguinary theatre again opens itself to view
The baleful images of terror crowd around me; and
discontented ghosts, with hollow groans, appear to so
lemnize the anniversary of the fifth of March.

Approach we then the melancholly walk of death.
Hither let me call the gay companion ; here let him drop
a farewell tear upon that body which so late he saw
vigorous and warm with social mirth ; hither let me
lead the tender mother to weep over her beloved son —
come widowed mourner, here satiate thy grief; behold
thy murdered husband gasping on the ground, and to
complete the pompous show of wretchedness, bring in
each hand thy infant children to bewail their father's
fate — take heed, ye orphan babes, lest, whilst your
streaming eyes are fixed upon the ghastly corpse, your
feet slide on the stones bespattered with your father's
brains* ! Enough ; this tragedy need not be heightened
by an infant weltering in the blood of him that gave it
birth. Nature reluctant, shrinks already from the view,
and the chilled blood rolls slowly backward to its foun
tain. We wildly stare about, and with amazement ask,
who spread this ruin round us? What wretch has
dared deface^ the image of his God ? Has haughty
France, or cruefSpain, sent forth her myrmidons ?
Has the grim savage rushed again from the far distant,
wilderness ; or does some fiend, fierce from the depth

* After Mr. Gray had been shot through the body, and had i'allen
dead on the ground, a bayonet was pushed through his skull ; part of
the bone being broken, his brains fell out upon the pavement.

VOL. v. 6

38 MR. WARREN'S ORATIOJS,

of hell, with all the rancorous malice which the apos
tate damned can feel, twang her destructive bow, and
hurl her deadly arrows at our breast ? No, none of
these — but. how astonishing! it is the hand of Britain
that inflicts the wound ! The arms of George, our
rightful king, have been employed to shed that blood,
when justice, or the honor of his crown, had called his
subjects to the field.

But pity, grief, astonishment, with all the softer
movements of the soul, must now give way to stronger
passions. Say, fellow-citizens, what dreadful thought
now swells your heaving bosoms ; you fly to arms —
sharp indignation flashes from each eye — revenge
gnashes her iron teeth — death grins a hideous smile,
secure to drench his greedy jaws in human gore — whilst
hovering furies darken all the air !

But stop, my bold adventurous countrymen; stain
not your weapons with the blood of Britons. Attend
to reason's voice; humanity puts in her claim, and
sues to be again admitted to her wonted seat, the bo
som of the brave. Revenge is far beneath the no
ble mind. Many, perhaps, compelled to rank among
the vile assassins, do from their inmost souls, de
test the barbarous action. The winged death, shot
from your arms, may chance to pierce some breast
that bleeds already for your injured country.

The storm subsides — a solemn pause ensues — you
spare, upon condition they depart. They go—they
quit your city — they no more shall give offence. Thus
closes the important drama.

And could it have been conceived that we again
should have seen a British army in our land, sent to
enforce obedience to acts of parliament destructive of
our liberty ? But the royal ear, far distant from this
western world, has been assaulted by the tongue of
slander ; and villains, traitorous alike to king and
country, have prevailed upon a gracious prince to
clothe his countenance with ^wrath, and to erect the
hostile banner against a people ever affectionate and
loyal to him and his illustrious predecessors of the

AT BOSTON, MARCH 6, 1775. 39

House of Hanover. Our streets are again filled with
armed men ; our harbor is crowded with ships of
war ; but these cannot intimidate us ; our liberty must
be preserved ; it is far dearer than life, we hold it even
dear as our allegiance ; we must defend it against the
attacks of friends as well as enemies ; we cannot suffer
even Britons to ravish it from us.

No longer could we reflect with generous pride, on
the heroic actions of our American forefathers; no
longer boast our origin from that far-famed island,
whose warlike sons have so often drawn their well tried
swords to save her from the ravages of tyranny;
could we, but for a moment, entertain the thought of
giving up our liberty. The man who meanly will sub
mit to wear a shackle, contemns the noblest gift of hea
ven, and impiously affronts the God that made him free.

It was a maxim of the Roman people, which emi
nently conduced to the greatness of that state, never
to despair of the commonwealth. The maxim may
prove as salutary to us now, as it did to them. Short
sighted mortals see not the numerous links of small and
great events, which form the chain on which the fate
of kings and nations is suspended. Ease and prosperi
ty, though pleasing for a day, have often sunk a peo
ple into effeminacy and sloth. Hardships and dangers,
though we forever strive to shun them, have frequent
ly called forth such virtues, as have commanded the
applause and reverence of an admiring world. Our
country loudly calls you to be circumspect, vigilant,
active and brave. Perhaps, (all gracious heaven
avert it,) perhaps, the power of Britain, a nation
great in war, by some malignant influence, may be
employed to enslave you ; but let not even this dis
courage you. Her arms, 'tis true, have filled the world
wit i terror; her troops have reaped the laurels of the
field ; her fleets have rode triumphant on the sea ; and
when, or where, did you, my countrymen, depart in
glorious from the field of fight ? You too can show
the trophies of your forefathers' victories and your
own ; can name the fortresses and battles you have

40 MK. WARREN'S ORATIO.V

won; and many of you count the honorable scars oi'
wounds received, whilst fighting for your king and
country.

Where justice is the standard, heaven is the war
rior's shield : but conscious guilt unnerves the arm that
lifts the sword against the innocent. Britain, united
with these colonies by commerce and affection, by in
terest and blood, may mock the threats of France and
Spain; may be the seat of universal empire. But
should America, either by force, or those more danger
ous engines, luxury and corruption, ever be brought
into a state of vassallage, Britain must lose her freedom
also. No longer shall she sit the empress of the sea ;
her ships no more shall waft her thunders over the wide
ocean ; the wreath shall wither on her temples ; her
weakened arm shall be unable to defend her coasts :
and she at last, must bow her venerable head to some
proud foreigner's despotic rule.

But if, from past events, we may venture to form a
judgment of the future, we justly may expect that the
devices of our enemies will but increase the triumphs
of our country. I must indulge a hope that Britain's
liberty, as well as ours, will eventually be preserved by
the virtue of America.

The attempt of the British parliament to raise a
revenue from America, and our denial of their right to
do it, have excited an almost universal inquiry into the
right of mankind in general, and of British subjects in
particular; the necessary result of which, must be
such a liberality of sentiment, and such a jealousy of
those in power, as will, better than an adamantine wall,
secure us against the future approaches of despotism.

The malice of the Boston port-bill has been defeated,
in a very considerable degree, by giving you an op
portunity of deserving, and our brethren in this and
our sister colonies, an opportunity of bestowing those
benefactions which have delighted your friends and
astonished your enemies, not only in America, but in
Europe also. And what is more valuable still, the
sympathetic feelings for a brother in distress, and the

AT BOSTON, MARCH, 6, 1775. 41

grateful emotions, excited in the breast of him who finds
relief, must forever endear each to the other, and form
those indissoluble bonds of friendship and affection, on
which the preservation of our rights so evidently depend.

The mutilation of our charter has made every
other colony jealous for its own ; for this, if once sub
mitted to by us, would set on float the property and
government of every British settlement upon the con
tinent. If charters are not deemed sacred, how misera
bly precarious is every thing founded upon them !

Even the sending troops to put these acts in execu
tion, is not without advantage to us. The exactness
and beauty of their discipline inspire our youth with
ardor in the pursuit of military knowledge. Charles
the invincible, taught Peter the great the art of war.
The battle of Pultowa convinced Charles of the pro
ficiency Peter had made.

Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired
of. Our enemies are numerous and powerful ; but we
have many friends, determining to be free, and heaven
and earth will aid the resolution. On you depend the
fortunes of America. You are to decide the important
question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of
millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves. The
faltering tongue of hoary age, calls on you to support
your country. The lisping infant raises its suppliant
hands, imploring defence against the monster slavery.
Your fathers look from their celestial seats with smil
ing approbation on their sons, who boldly stand forth
in the cause of virtue ; but sternly frown upon the in
human miscreant, who, to secure the loaves and fishes
to himself, would breed a serpent to destroy his
children.

But, pardon me, my fellow-citizens, I know you want
not zeal or fortitude. You will maintain your rights,
or perish in the generous struggle. However difficult
the combat, you never will decline it when freedom is
the prize. An independence of Great Britain is not
our aim. No, our wish is, that Britain and the colo
nies may, like the oak and ivy, grow and increase in

42 MR. WARREN'S ORATION, &c.

strength together. But whilst the infatuated plan of
making one part of the empire slaves to the other is
persisted in, the interest and safety of Britain, as well
as the colonies, require that the wise measures, re
commended by the honorable the continental congress,
be steadily pursued; whereby the unnatural contest
between a parent honored, and a child beloved, may
probably be brought to such an issue, as that the
peace and happiness of both may be established upon
a lasting basis. But if these pacific measures are in
effectual, and it appears that the only way to safety
is through fields of blood, I know you will not turn your
faces from your foes, but will, undauntedly, press for
ward, until tyranny is trodden under foot, and you
have fixed your adored goddess liberty, fast by a
Brunswick's side, on the American throne.

You then, who nobly have espoused your country's
cause, who generously have sacrificed wealth and ease ;
who have despised the pomp and show of tinselled
greatness; refused the summons to the festive board;
been deaf to the alluring calls of luxury and mirth ;
who have forsaken the downy pillow, to keep your vi
gils by the midnight lamp for the salvation of your in
vaded country, that you might break the fowler's snare,
and disappoint the vulture of his prey — you then will
reap that harvest of renown which you so justly have
deserved. Your country shall pay her grateful tribute
of applause. Even the children of your most invete
rate enemies, ashamed to tell from whom they sprang,
while they, in secret, curse their stupid, cruel parents,
shall 'join the general voice of gratitude to those who
broke the fetters which their father's forged.

Having redeemed your country, ard secured the
blessing to future generations, who, fired by your ex
ample, shall emulate your virtues, and learn from you
the heavenly art of making millions happy ; with heart
felt joy, with transports all your own, you cry, the glo
rious work is done; then drop the mantle to some
young Elisha, and take your seats with kindred spirits
in your native skies !

SPEECH OF JAMES WILSON,

DELIVERED IN JANUARY, 1775,

IN THE CONVENTION FOR THE PROVINCE OF PENN
SYLVANIA IN VINDICATION OF THE COLONIES.*

MR. CHAIRMAN,

WHENCE, sir, proceeds all the invidious and ill-
grounded clamor against the colonists of America?
Why are they stigmatized in Britain, as licentious and
ungovernable ? Why is their virtuous opposition to
the illegal attempts of their governors, represented
under the falsest colors, and placed in the most un
gracious point of view? This opposition, when exhi
bited in its true light, and when viewed, with unjaun-
diced eyes, from a proper situation, and at a proper
distance, stands confessed the lovely offspring of free
dom. It breathes the spirit of its parent. Of this
ethereal spirit, the whole conduct, and particularly
the late conduct of the colonists, has shown them
eminently possessed. It has animated and regulated
every part of their proceedings. It has been recog
nized to be genuine, by all those symptoms and effects,
by which it has been distinguished in other ages and
other countries. It has been calm and regular : it has
not acted without occasion : it has not acted dispro-

* The king, in his speech at the opening of the British parlia
ment, in November, J774, informed them, that "a most daring
spirit of resistance and disobedience still prevailed in Massachusetts,
and had broken forth in fresh violences of a criminal nature ; that
the most proper and effectual methods had been taken to prevent
these mischiefs ; and that they, (the parliament,) might depend upon
a firm resolution, to withstand every attempt to weaken or impair
the supreme authority of parliament, over all the dominions of the
crown." It was in reference to this subject, that Mr. Wilson deli
vered the following speech. — COMPILER.

44 MR. WILSON'S SPEECH IN

portionably to the occasion. As the attempts, open
or secret, to undermine or to destroy it, have been re
peated or enforced ; in a just degree, its vigilance and
its vigor have been exerted to defeat or to disappoint
them. As its exertions have been sufficient for those
purposes hitherto, let us hence draw a joyful prognos
tic, that they will continue sufficient for those purposes
hereafter. It is not yet exhausted ; it will still operate
irresistibly whenever a necessary occasion shall call
forth its strength.

Permit me, sir, by appealing, in a few instances, to
the spirit and conduct of the colonists, to evince, that
what I have said of them is just. Did they disclose
any uneasiness at the proceedings and claims of the
British parliament, before those claims and proceed
ings afforded a reasonable cause for it? Did they
even disclose any uneasiness, when a reasonable cause
for it was first given ? Our rights were invaded by
their regulations of our internal policy. We submit
ted to them: we were unwilling to oppose them.
The spirit of liberty was slow to act. When those in
vasions were renewed; when the efficacy and malig
nancy of them were attempted to be redoubled by the
stamp act ; when chains were formed for us ; and pre
parations were made for rivetting them on our limbs,
what measures did we pursue ? The spirit of liberty
found it necessary now to act : but she acted with the
calmness and decent dignity suited to her character.
Were we rash or seditious ? Did we discover want of
loyalty to our sovereign ? Did we betray want of af
fection to our brethren in Britain ? Let our dutiful
and reverential petitions to the throne — let our respect
ful, though firm, remonstrances to the parliament —
let our warm and affectionate addresses to our breth
ren, and (we will still call them,) our friends in Great
Britain — let all those, transmitted from every part of
the continent, testify the truth. By their testimony let
our conduct be tried.

As our proceedings, during the existence and ope-

VINDICATION OF THE COLONIES. 15

ration of the stamp act, prove fully and incontestably
the painful sensations that tortured our breasts from
the prospect of disunion with Britain ; the peals of joy,
which burst forth universally, upon the repeal of that
odious statute, loudly proclaim the heartfelt delight
produced in us by a reconciliation with her. Unsus
picious, because undesigning, we buried our complaints
and the causes of them, in oblivion, and returned, with
eagerness, to our former unreserved confidence. Our
connexion with our parent country, and the reciprocal
blessings resulting from it to her and to us, were the
favorite and pleasing topics of our public discourses
and our private conversations. Lulled into delightful
security, we dreamed of nothing but increasing fond
ness and friendship, cemented and strengthened by a
kind and perpetual communication of good offices.
Soon, however, too soon, were we awakened from
the soothing dreams ! Our enemies renewed their de
signs against us, not with less malice, but with more
art. Under the plausible pretence of regulating our
trade, and, at the same time, of making provision for
the administration of justice and the support of gov
ernment, in some of the colonies, they pursued their
scheme of depriving us of our property without our
consent. As the attempts to distress us, and to de
grade us to a rank inferior to that of freemen, ap
peared now to be reduced into a regular system, it be
came proper, on our part, to form a regular system
for counteracting them. We ceased to import goods
from Great Britain. Was this measure dictated by
selfishness or by licentiousness? Did it not injure
ourselves, while it injured the British merchants and
manufacturers ? Was it inconsistent with the peace
ful demeanor of subjects to abstain from making pur
chases, when our freedom and our safety rendered it
necessary for us to abstain from them ? A regard for
our freedom and our safety was our only motive ; for
no sooner had the parliament, by repealing part of the
revenue laws, inspired us with the flattering hopes, that
VOL. v, 7

4(5 MR. WJLSON'S SFEECH lls

they had departed from their intentions of oppressing
and of taxing us, than we forsook our plan for defeat
ing those intentions, and began to import as formerly.
Far from being peevish or captious, we took no public
notice even of their declaratory law of dominion over
us : our candor led us to consider it as a decent ex
pedient of retreating from the actual exercise of that
dominion.

But, alas! the root of bitterness still remained.
The duty on tea was reserved to furnish occasion to
the ministry for a new effort to enslave and to ruin us ;
and the East India Company were chosen, and con
sented to be the detested instruments of ministerial
despotism and cruelty. A cargo of their tea arrived
at Boston. By a low artifice of the governor, and by
the wicked activity of the tools of government, it was
rendered impossible to store it up, or to send it back,
as was done at other places. A number of persons,
unknown, destroyed it.

Let us here make a concession to our enemies : let
us suppose, that the transaction deserves all the dark
and hideous colors, in which they have painted it : let
us even suppose, (for our cause admits of an excess of
candor,) that all their exaggerated accounts of it were
confined strictly to the truth : what will follow ? Will
it follow, that every British colony in America, or even
the colony of Massachusetts Bay, or even the town of
Boston, in that colony, merits the imputation of being
factious and seditious ? Let the frequent mobs and
riots, that have happened in Great Britain upon much
more trivial occasions, shame our calumniators into
silence. Will it follow, because the rules of order and
regular government were, in that instance, violated by
the offenders, that, for this reason, the principles of
the constitution, and the maxims of justice, must be
violated by their punishment ? Will it follow, because
those who were guilty could not be known, that, there
fore, those, who were known not to be guilty, must suf
fer ? Will it follow, that even the guilty should be con-

VINDICATION OF THE COLONIES. |7

demned without being heard — that they should be con
demned upon partial testimony, upon the representa
tions of their avowed and embittered enemies ? Why
were they not tried in courts of justice, known to their
constitution, and by juries of their neighborhood ?
Their courts and their juries were not, in the case of
captain Preston, transported beyond the bounds of
justice by their resentment : why, then, should it be
presumed, that, in the case of those offenders, they
would be prevented from doing justice by their affec
tion ? But the colonists, it seems, must be stript of
their judicial, as well as of their legislative powers.
They must be bound by a legislature, they must be
tried by a jurisdiction, not their own. Their constitu
tions must be changed: their liberties must be abridg
ed : and those, who shall be most infamously active in
changing their constitutions and abridging their liber
ties, must, by an express provision, be exempted from
punishment.

I do not exaggerate the matter, sir, when I extend
these observations to all the colonists. The parlia
ment meant to extend the effects of their proceedings
to all the colonists. The plan, on which their pro
ceedings are formed, extends to them all. From
an incident of no very uncommon or atrocious na
ture, which happened in one colony, in one town
in that colony, and in which only a few of the
inhabitants of that town took a part, an occasion
has been taken by those, who probably intend
ed it, and who certainly prepared the way for it,
to impose upon that colony, and to lay a foundation
and a precedent for imposing upon all the rest, a sys
tem of statutes, arbitrary, unconstitutional, oppressive,
in every view, and in every degree subversive of the
rights, and inconsistent with even the name of freemen.

Were the colonists so blind as not to discern the
consequences of these measures ? Were they so su
pinely inactive, as to take no steps for guarding
against them? They were not. They ought not to
have been so. We saw a breach made in those bar-

.18 MR. WILSON'S SPEECH IN

riers, which our ancestors, British and American, with
so much care, with so much danger, with so much
treasure, and with so much blood, had erected, ce
mented and established for the security of their liber
ties, and — with filial piety let us mention it — of ours.
We saw the attack actually begun upon one part :
ought we to have folded our hands in indolence, to
have lulled our eyes in slumbers, till the attack was
carried on, so as to become irresistible, in every part ?
Sir, I presume to think not. We were roused; we
were alarmed, as we had reason to be. But still our
measures have been such as the spirit of liberty and of
loyalty directed ; not such as a spirit of sedition or
of disaffection would pursue. Our counsels have been
conducted without rashness and faction : our resolu
tions have been taken without phrensy or fury.

That the sentiments of every individual concerning
that important object, his liberty, might be known and
regarded, meetings have been held, and deliberations
carried on in every particular district. That the senti
ments of all those individuals might gradually and regu
larly be collected into a single point, and the conduct
of each inspired and directed by the result of the whole
united ; county committees, provincial conventions, a
continental congress have been appointed, have met
and resolved. By this means, a chain — more inesti
mable, and, while the necessity for it continues, we
hope, more indissoluble than one of gold — a chain of
freedom has been formed, of which every individual in
these colonies, who is willing to preserve the greatest
of human blessings, his liberty, has the pleasure of be
holding himself a link.

Are these measures, sir, the, brats of disloyalty, of
disaffection ? There are miscreants among us, wasps
that suck poison from the most salubrious flowers,
who tell us they are. They tell us that all those as
semblies are unlawful, and unauthorized by our consti
tutions ; and that all their deliberations and resolutions
are so many transgressions of the duty of subjects.
The utmost malice brooding over the utmost base-

VINDICATION OF THE COLONIES. 49

ness, and nothing but such a hated commixture, must
have hatched this calumny. Do not those men know
• — would they have others not to know — that it was
impossible for the inhabitants of the same province,
and for the legislatures of the different provinces, to
communicate their sentiments to one another in the
modes appointed for such purposes, by their different
constitutions? Do not they know — would they have
others not to know — that all this was rendered impos
sible by those very persons, who now, or whose min
ions now, urge this objection against us ? Do not
they know — would they have others not to know — that
the different assemblies, who could be dissolved by the
governors, were, in consequence of ministerial man-
idates, dissolved by them, whenever they attempted to
turn their attention to the greatest objects, which, as
guardians of the liberty of their constituents, could be
presented to their view ? The arch enemy of the hu
man race torments them only for those actions, to
which he 'has tempted, but to which he has not neces
sarily obliged them. Those men refine even upon in
fernal malice : they accuse, they threaten us, (superla
tive impudence !) for taking those very steps, which we
were laid under the disagreeable necessity of taking
by themselves, or by those in whose hateful service
they are enlisted. But let them know, that our coun
sels, our deliberations, our resolutions, if not author
ized by the forms, because that was rendered impossi
ble by our enemies, are nevertheless authorized by that
which weighs much more in the scale of reason — by
the spirit of our constitutions. Was the convention of
the barons at Runnymede, where the tyranny of
John was checked, and magna charta was signed, au
thorized by the forms of the constitution ? Was the
convention parliament, that recalled Charles the Se
cond, and restored the monarchy, authorized by the
forms of the constitution ? Was the convention of
lords and commons, that placed king William on the
throne, and secured the monarchy and liberty likewise.

50 MK. WILSON'S SPEECH IN

authorized by the forms of the constitution ? I cannot
conceal rny emotions of pleasure, when I observe, that
the objections of our adversaries cannot be urged
against us, but in common with those venerable as
semblies, whose proceedings formed such an acces
sion to British liberty and British renown.

The resolutions entered into, and the recommen
dations given, by the continental congress, have
stamped, in the plainest characters, the genuine and
enlightened spirit of liberty, upon the conduct observ
ed, and the measures pursued, in consequence of them.
As the invasions of our rights have become more and
more formidable, our opposition to them has increas
ed in firmness and vigor, in a just, and in no more than
a just, proportion. We will not import goods from
Great Britain or Ireland: in a little time we will sus
pend our exportations to them : and, if the same illi
beral and destructive system of policy be still carried
on against us, in a little time more we will not con
sume their manufactures. In that colony, where the
attacks have been most open, immediate and direct,
some further steps have been taken, and those steps
have met with the deserved approbation of the other
provinces.

Is this scheme of conduct allied to rebellion? Can
any symptoms of disloyalty to his majesty, of disincli
nation to his illustrious family, or of disregard to his
authority, be traced in it ? Those, who would blend,
and whose crimes have made it necessary for them to
blend, the tyrannic acts of administration with the
lawful measures of government, and to veil every fla
gitious procedure of the ministry under the venerable
mantle of majesty, pretend to discover, and employ
their emissaries to publish the pretended discovery of
such symptoms. We are not, however, to be imposed
upon by such shallow artifices. We know, that we
have not violated the laws or the constitution ; and
that, therefore, we are safe as long as the laws retain
their force and the constitution its vigor : and that,

VINDICATION OF THE COLONIES. 51

whatever our demeanor be, we cannot be safe much
longer. But another object demands our attention.

We behold, sir, with the deepest anguish we be
hold, that our opposition has not been as effectual as
it has been constitutional. The hearts of our oppres
sors have not relented : our complaints have not been
heard : our grievances have riot been redressed : our
rights are still invaded: and have we no cause to
dread, that the invasions of them will be enforced, in
a manner against which all reason and argument, and
all opposition, of every peaceful kind, will be vain ?
Our opposition has hitherto increased with our op
pression : shall it, in the most desperate of all contin
gencies, observe the same proportion ?

Let us pause, sir, before we give an answer to this
question. The fate of us ; the fate of millions now alive ;
the fate of millions yet unborn, depends upon the an
swer. Let it be the result of calmness and of intrepidi
ty : let it be dictated by the principles of loyalty, and
the principles of liberty. Let it be such, as never, in
the worst events, to give us reason to reproach our
selves, or others reason to reproach us for having done
too much or too little.

Perhaps the following resolution may be found not
altogether unbefitting our present situation. With
the greatest deference I submit it to the mature consi
deration of this assembly.

" That the act of the British parliament for altering
the charter and constitution of the colony of Massa
chusetts Bay, and those fc for the impartial administra
tion of justice' in that colony, for shutting the port of
Boston, and for quartering soldiers on the inhabitants
of the colonies, are unconstitutional and void ; and
can confer no authority upon those who act under co
lor of them. That the crown cannot, by its preroga
tive, alter the charter or constitution of that colony :
that all attempts to alter the said charter or constitu
tion, unless by the authority of the legislature of that
colonv, are manifest violations of the rights of that co~

52 MR. WILSON'S SPEECH IN

lony, and illegal : that all force employed to carry such
unjust and illegal attempts into execution, is force
without authority : that it is the right of British sub
jects to resist such force : that this right is founded
both upon the letter and the spirit of the British con
stitution."

To prove, at this time, that those acts are unconsti
tutional and void is, I apprehend, altogether unnecessa
ry. The doctrine has been proved fully, on other oc
casions, and has received the concurring assent of
British America. It rests upon plain and indubitable
truths. We do not send members to the British par
liament : we have parliaments, (it is immaterial what
name they go by,) of our own.

That a void act can confer no authority upon those,
who proceed under color of it, is a self-evident pro
position.

Before I proceed to the other clauses, I think it use
ful to recur to some of the fundamental maxims of the
British constitution ; upon which, as upon a rock, our
wise ancestors erected that stable fabric, against which
the gates of hell have not hitherto prevailed. Those
maxims I shall apply fairly, and, I flatter myself, satis
factorily to evince every particular contained in the
resolution.

The government of Britain, sir. was never an arbi
trary government; our ancestors were never inconsi
derate enough to trust those rights, which God and
nature had given them, unreservedly into the hands of
their princes. However difficult it may be, in other
states, to prove an original contract subsisting in any
other manner, and on any other conditions, than are
naturally and necessarily implied in the very idea of
the first institution of a state ; it is the easiest thing
imaginable, since the revolution of 1688, to prove it
in our constitution, and to ascertain some of the ma
terial articles, of which it consists. It has been often
appealed to : it has been often broken, at least on one
part : it has been often renewed : it has been often

VINDICATION OF THE COLONIES. S3

confirmed: it still subsists in its full force: " it binds
the king as much as the meanest subject." The mea
sures of his power, and the limits, beyond which he can
not extend it, are circumscribed and regulated by the
same authority, and with the same precision, as the
measures of the subject's obedience ; and the limits,
beyond which he is under no obligation to practise h%
are fixed and ascertained. Liberty is, by the consti
tution, of equal stability, of equal antiquity, and of
equal authority with prerogative. The duties of the
king and those of the subject are plainly reciprocal :
they can be violated on neither side, unless they be
performed on the other. The law is the common
standard, by which the excesses of prerogative, as
well as the excesses of liberty, are to be regulated and
reformed.

Of this great compact between the king and his
people, one essential article to be performed on his
part is, that, in those cases where provision is express
ly made arid limitations set by the laws, his govern
ment shall be conducted according to those provi
sions, and restrained according to those limitations ;
that, in those cases, which are not expressly provided
for by the laws, it shall be conducted by the best rules
of discretion, agreeably to the general spirit of the
laws, and subserviently to their ultimate end — the in
terest and happiness of his subjects ; that, in no case,
it shall be conducted contrary to the express, or to the
implied principles of the constitution/

These general maxims, which wej may justly con
sider as fundamentals of our government, will, by a
plain and obvious .application of them to the parts of
the resolution remaining to be proved, demonstrate
them to be strictly agreeable to the laws arid constitu
tion.

We can be at no loss in resolving, that the king
cannot, by his prerogative, alter the charter or con
stitution of the colony of Massachusetts Bay. Upon
what principle could such an exertion of prerogative

VOL v. 8

54 MR. WILSON'S SPEECH IN

be justified? On the acts of parliament ? They are
already proved to be void. On the discretionary pow
er which the king has of acting where the laws are
silent ? That power must be subservient to the inter
est and happiness of those, concerning whom it ope
rates. But I go further. Instead of being supported
by law, or the principles of prerogative, such an altera
tion is totally and absolutely repugnant to both It is
contrary to express law. The charter and constitu
tion, we speak of, are confirmed by the only legislative
power capable of confirming them ; and no other
power, but that which can ratify, can destroy. If it is
contrary to express law, the consequence is necessary,
that it is contrary to the principles of prerogative ; for
prerogative can operate only when the law is silent.

In no view can this alteration be justified, or so
much as excused. It cannot be justified or excused
by the acts of parliament; because the authority of
parliament does not extend to it : it cannot be justi
fied or excused by the operation of prerogative ; be
cause this is none of the cases, in which prerogative can
operate : it cannot be justified or excused by the legis
lative authority of the colony ; because that authority
never has been, and, I presume, never will be given for
any such purpose.

If I have proceeded hitherto, as I am persuaded I
have, upon safe and sure ground, I can, with great
confidence, advance a step further and say, that all
attempts to alter the charter or constitution of that
colony, unless by the authority of its own legislature,
are violations of its rights, and illegal.

If those attempts are illegal, must not all force, em
ployed to carry them into execution, be force employ
ed against law, and without authority ? The conclusion
is unavoidable.

Have not British subjects, then, a right to resist
such force — force acting with authority — force em
ployed contrary to law — force employed to destroy the
very existence of law and of liberty ? They have. sir.

VINDICATION OF THE COLONIES. 5$

and this right is secured to them both by the letter and
the spirit of the British constitution, by which the
measures and the conditions of their obedience are
appointed. The British liberties, sir, and the means
and the right of defending them, are not the grants of
princes ; and of what our princes never granted they
surely can never deprive us.

I beg leave, here, to mention and to obviate some
plausible but ill founded objections, that have been,
and will be, held forth by our adversaries, against the
principles of the resolution now before us. It will be
observed, that those, employed for bringing about the
proposed alteration in the charter and constitution of
the colony of Massachusetts Bay, act by virtue of a
commission for that purpose from his majesty ; that all
resistance of forces, commissioned by his majesty, is
resistance of his majesty's authority and government,
contrary to the duty of allegiance, and treasonable.
These objections will be displayed in their most spe
cious colors ; every artifice of chicanery and sophistry
will be put in practice to establish them ; law authori
ties, perhaps, will be quoted arid tortured to prove
them. Those principles of our constitution, which
were designed to preserve and to secure the liberty of
the people, and, for the sake of that, the tranquillity of
government, will be perverted on this, as they have
been on many other occasions, from their true inten
tion, and will be made use of for the contrary purpose
of endangering the latter, and destroying the former.
The names of the most exalted virtues, on one hand,
and of the most atrocious crimes, on the other, will be
employed in direct contradiction to the nature of those
virtues, and of those crimes ; and, in this manner, those,
who cannot look beyond names, will be deceived ; and
those, whose aim it is to deceive by names, will have
an opportunity of accomplishing it. But, sir, this dis
guise will not impose upon us. We will look to things
as well as to names ; and, by doing so, we shall be fully
satisfied, that all those objections rest upon mere ver-

5*> MR. WILSON'S SPEECH LN

bal sophistry, and have not even the remotest alliance
with the principles of reason or of law.

In the first place, then, I say, that the persons who
allege, that those, employed to alter the charter and
constitution of Massachusetts Bay, act by virtue of a
commission from his majesty for that purpose, speak
improperly, and contrary to the truth of the case. I
say, they act by virtue of no such commission; I say,
it is impossible they can act by virtue of such a com
mission. What is called a commission either contains
particular directions for the purpose mentioned; or it
contains no such particular directions. In either case
can those, who act for that purpose, act by virtue of a
commission ? In one case, what is called a commission
is void ; it has no legal existence ; it can communicate
no authority. In the other case, it extends not to the
purpose mentioned. The latter point is too plain to be
insisted on ; I prove the former.

" Id rex potest" says the law, "quod de jure potest"
The king's power is a power according to law. His
commands, if the authority of lord chief justice Hale
may be depended upon, are under the directive pow
er of the law ; and consequently invalid, if unlawful.
" Commissions," says my lord Coke, " are legal ; and are
like the king's writs ; and none are lawful, but such as
are allowed by the common law, or warranted by some
act of parliament."

Let us examine any commission expressly directing
those to whom it is given, to use military force for
carrying into execution the alterations, proposed to be
made in the charter and constitution of Massachusetts
Bay, by the foregoing maxims and authorities; and
what we have said concerning it will appear obvious
and conclusive. It is not warranted by any act of par
liament, because, as has been mentioned on this, and
has been proved on other occasions, any such act is
void. It is not warranted, and I believe it will not be
pretended that it is warranted, by the common law. It
is not warranted by the royal prerogative, because, as

VINDICATION OF THE COLONIES. 57

has already been fully shown, it is diametrically oppo
site to the principles and the ends of prerogative.
Upon what foundation, then, can it lean and be sup
ported ? Upon none. Like an enchanted castle, it
may terrify those, whose eyes are affected by the magic
influence of the sorcerers, despotism and slavery ; but
so soon as the charm is dissolved, and the genuine rays
of liberty and of the constitution dart in upon us, the for
midable appearance vanishes, and we discover that it
was the baseless fabric of a vision, that never had any
real existence.

I have dwelt the longer upon this part of the objec
tions, urged against us by our adversaries, because
this part is the foundation of all the others. We have
now removed it ; and they must fall of course. For
if the force, acting for the purposes we have men
tioned, does not act, and cannot act, by virtue of any
commission from his majesty, the consequence is unde
niable, that it acts without his majesty's authority;
that the resistance of it is no resistance of his majesty's
authority, nor incompatible with the duties of allegi
ance.

And now, sir, let me appeal to the impartial tribu
nal of reason and truth ; let me appeal to every un
prejudiced and judicious observer of the laws of Bri
tain, and of the constitution of the British government ;
let me appeal, I say, whether the principles on which
I argue, or the principles on which alone my arguments
can be opposed, are those which ought to be adhered
to and acted upon ; which of them are most consonant
to our laws and liberties ; which of them have the
strongest, and are likely to have the most effectual
tendency to establish and secure the royal power and
dignity.

Are we deficient in loyalty to his majesty ? Let our
conduct convict, for it will fully convict, the insinua
tion, that we are, of falsehood. Our loyalty has al
ways appeared in the true form of loyalty ; in obeying
our sovereign according to law : let those, who would

Sg MR. WILSON'S SPEECH IN

require it in any other form, know, that we call the
persons who execute his commands, when contrary to
law, disloyal and traitors. Are we enemies to the pow
er of the crown ? No, sir, we are its best friends :
this friendship prompts us to wish, that the power of
the crown may be firmly established on the most solid
basis : but we know, that the constitution alone will
perpetuate the former, and securely uphold the latter.
Are our principles irreverent to majesty ? They are
quite the reverse: we ascribe to it perfection almost
divine. We say, that the king can do no wrong:
we say, that to do wrong is the property, not of
power, but of weakness. We feel oppression, and
will oppose it; but we know, for our constitution
tells us, that oppression can never spring from the
throne. We must, therefore, search elsewhere for
its source: our infallible guide will direct us to it.
Our constitution tells us, that all oppression springs
from the ministers of the throne. The attributes
of perfection, ascribed to the king, are, neither by
the constitution, nor in fact, communicable to his
ministers. They may do wrong; they have often
done wrong ; they have been often punished for doing
wrong.

Here we may discern the true cause of all the im
pudent clamor and unsupported accusations of the
ministers and of their minions, that have been raised
and made against the conduct of the Americans.
Those ministers and minions are sensible, that the op
position is directed, not against his majesty, but against
them ; because they have abused his majesty's con
fidence, brought discredit upon his government, and
derogated from his justice. They see the public ven
geance collected in dark clouds around them : their
consciences tell them, that it should be hurled, like a
thunderbolt, at their guilty heads. Appalled with
guilt and fear, they skulk behind the throne. Is it
disrespectful to drag them into public view, and make
a distinction between them and his majesty, under

VINDICATION OF THE COLONIES. 59

whose venerable name they daringly attempt to shel
ter their crimes ? Nothing can more effectually con
tribute to establish his majesty on the throne, and to
secure to him the affections of his people, than this
distinction. By it we are taught to consider all the
blessings of government as flowing from the throne ;
and to consider every instance of oppression as pro
ceeding, which in truth, is oftenest the case, from the
ministers.

If, now, it is true, that all force employed for the
purposes so often mentioned, is force unwarranted by
any act of parliament ; unsupported by any principle
of the common law ; unauthorized by any commission
from the crown ; that, instead of being employed for
the support of the constitution and his majesty's gov
ernment, it must be employed for the support of op
pression and ministerial tyranny; if all this is true,
(and I flatter myself it appears to be true,) can any one
hesitate to say, that to resist such force is lawful : and
that both the letter and the spirit of the British consti
tution justify such resistance ?

Resistance, both by the letter and the spirit of the
British constitution, may be carried further, when ne
cessity requires it, than I have carried it. Many ex
amples in the English history might be adduced, and
many authorities of the greatest weight might be
brought to show, that when the king, forgetting his
character and his dignity, has stepped forth, and openly
avowed and taken a part in such iniquitous conduct
as has been described; in such cases, indeed, the dis
tinction abovementioned, wisely made by the consti
tution for the security of the crown, could not be ap
plied ; because the crown had unconstitutionally ren
dered the application of it impossible. What has
been the consequence ? The distinction between him
and his minister has been lost; but they have not
been raised to his situation : he has sunk to theirs.

SPEECH OF PATRICK HENRY,

DELIVERED

IN THE CONVENTION OF DELEGATES OF VIRGINIA,
MARCH 23, 1775,

On the following resolutions, introduced by himself: u Resolved,
That a well regulated militia, composed of gentlemen and yeomen,
18 the natural strength and only security of a free government ;
that such a militia in this colony, would forever render it unne
cessary for the mother country to keep among us, for the purpose
of our defence, any standing army of mercenary soldiers, always
subversive of the quiet, and dangerous to the liberties of the peo
ple, and would obviate the pretext of taxing us for their support.

" That the establishment of such a militia is, at this time, peculiar
ly necessary, by the state of our laws for the protection and
defence of the country, some of which are already expired, and
others will shortly be so ; and that the known remissness of gov
ernment in calling us together in legislative capacity, renders it
too insecure, in this time of danger and distress, to rely, that op
portunity will be given of renewing them, in general assembly, or
making any provision to secure our inestimable rights and liberties
from those further violations with which they are threatened.

a Resolved, therefore, That this colony be immediately put into a
state of defence, and that be a committee to

prepare a plan for embodying, arming and disciplining such a num
ber of men, as may be sufficient for that purpose."

MR. PRESIDENT,

No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriot
ism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen
who have just addressed the House. But different
men often see the same subject in different lights ; and,
therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to
those gentlemen, if, entertaining as I do, opinions of a
character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth
my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no
time for ceremony. The question, before the House, is
one of awful moment to this country. For my own
part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of
freedom or slavery : and in proportion to the magni-

*

MR. HENRY'S SPEECH, &c. 61

tude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the de
bate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive
at truth, and fulfil the great responsibility which we
hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my
opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offence;,
I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards
my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the ma
jesty of heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the
illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against
a painful truth, and listen to the song of that syren, till
she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise
men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for li
berty ? Are we disposed to be of the number of those,
who having eyes, see not, and having ears* hear not,
the things which so nearly concern their temporal
salvation ? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it
may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to
know the worst, and to provide for it.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided ;
and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way
of judging of the future but by the past. And judging
by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the
conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years,
to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have
been pleased to solace themselves and the House ? Is it
that insidious smile with which our petition has been
lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a
snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be be
trayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious
reception of our petition comports with those warlike
preparations which cover our waters and darken our
land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of
love and reconciliation ? Have we shown ourselves
so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be call
ed in to win back our love ? Let us not deceive our
selves, sir. These are the implements of war and
subjugation; the last arguments to which kings re
sort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial

VOL. v. 9

62 MR. HENRY'S SPEECH IN THE

array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission ?
Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for
it ? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of
the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies
and armies ? No, sir, she has none. They are meant
fb' us: they can be meant for no other. They are
sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains,
which the British ministry have been so long forging.
And what have we to oppose to them ? Shall we try
argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last
ten years. Have we any thing new to offer upon the
subject ? Nothing. We have held the subject up in
every light of which it is capable ; but it has been all
in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble sup
plication ? What terms shall we find, which have not
been already exhausted ? Let us not, I beseech you,
sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done eve
ry thing that could be done, to avert the storm which is
now coming on. We have petitioned ; we have re
monstrated; we have supplicated ; we have prostrat
ed ourselves before the throne, and have implored its
interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the mi
nistry and parliament. Our petitions have been
slighted; our remonstrances have produced addition
al violence and insult; our supplications have been
disregarded; and we have been spurned, with con
tempt, from the foot of the throne ! In vain, after
these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace
and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for
hope. If we wish to be free — if we mean to preserve
inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we
have been so long contending — if we mean not basely
to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been
so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves
never to abandon, until the glorious object of our con
test shall be obtained — we must fight ! I repeat it,
sir, we must fight ! An appeal to arms and to the
God of Hosts is all that is left us !

They tell us. sir, that we are weak ; unable to cope

HOUSE OF DELEGATES OF VIRGINIA. 63

with FO formidable an adversary. But when shall we
be stringer? Will t be the next week, or the next
year ? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and
when -\ British guard ^hall be stationed in every house ?
Shall wo gather strength by irresolution and inaction ?
Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by
lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive
phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound
us hand and foot? Sir. we are not weak, if we make
a proper use of those means which the God of nature
hath placed in our power. Three millions of people,
armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a coun
try as that which we possess, are invincible by any
force which our enemy can send against us. Besides,
sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a
just God who presides over the destinies of nations ;
and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for
us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone ; it is to
the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we
have no election. If we were base enough to desire
it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There
is no retreat, but in submission and slavery! Our
chains are forged ! Their clanking may be heard on
the plains of Boston ! The war is inevitable — and let
it come ! I repeat it, sir, let it come !

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentle
men may cry, peace, peace — but there is no peace.
The war is actually begun! The next gale, that
sweeps from the north, will bring to our ears the clash
of resounding arms ! Our brethren are already in the
field ! Why stand we here idle ? What is it that gen
tlemen wish ? What would they have ? Is life so
dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the
price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty
God! I know not what course others may take ; but
as for me, give me liberty, or give me death !

SPEECH OF WILLIAM LIVINGSTON,

GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY,

TO THE LEGISLATURE OF THAT STATE, IN THE YEAR 1777,

GENTLEMEN,

HAVING, already, laid before the assembly, by mes
sages, the several matters that have occurred to me.
as more particularly demanding their attention, during
the present session, it may seem less necessary to ad
dress you in the more ceremonious form of a speech.
But, conceiving it my duty to the state, to deliver my
sentiments on the present situation of affairs, and the
eventful contest between Great Britain and America,
which could not, with any propriety, be conveyed in
occasional messages, you will excuse my giving you
the trouble of attending for that purpose.

After deploring with you the desolation spread
through this state, by an unrelenting enemy who
have, indeed, marked their progress with a devasta
tion unknown to civilized nations, and evincive of the
most implacable vengeance, I heartily congratulate
you upon that subsequent series of success, where
with it hath pleased the Almighty to crown the Ameri
can arms; and particularly on the important enter-
prize against the enemy at Trenton and the signal
victory obtained over them at Princeton, by the gal
lant troops under the command of his excellency
general Washington. Considering the contemptible
figure they make at present, and the disgust they have
given to many of their own confederates amongst us,
by th$ir more than Gothic ravages, (for thus doth the
great Disposer of events often deduce good out of
evil,) their irruption into our dominion will probably

GOVERNOR LIVINGSTON'S SPEECH, &<:. 65

redound to the public benefit. It has certainly ena
bled us the more effectually to distinguish our friends
from our enemies. It has winnowed the chaff from
the grain. It has discriminated the temporizing poli
tician, who, at the first appearance of danger, was de
termined to secure his idol, property, at the hazard of
the general weal, from the persevering patriot, who,
having embarked his all in the common cause, chooses
rather to risk, rather to lose that all, for the preser
vation of the more estimable treasure, liberty, than to
possess it, (enjoy it he certainly could not,) upon the
ignominious terms of tamely resigning his country and
posterity to perpetual servitude. It has, in a word,
opened the eyes of those who were made to believe,
that their impious merit, in abetting our persecutors,
would exempt them from being involved in the gene
ral calamity. But as the rapacity of the enemy was
boundless, their havoc was indiscriminate, and their
barbarity unparalleled. They have plundered friends
and foes. Effects, capable of division, they have di
vided. Such as were not, they have destroyed.
They have warred upon decrepit age ; warred upon
defenceless youth. They have committed hostilities
against the professors of literature, and the ministers
of religion; against public records, and private monu
ments, and books of improvement, and papers of cu
riosity, and against the arts and sciences. They have
butchered the wounded, asking for quarter ; mangled
the dying, weltering in their blood; refused to the
dead the rites of sepulture ; suffered prisoners to per
ish for want of sustenance ; violated the chastity of
women; disfigured private dwellings of taste and ele
gance ; and, in the rage of impiety and barbarism,
profaned and prostrated edifices dedicated to Almigh
ty God.

And yet there are amongst us, who, either from
ambitious or lucrative motives, or intimidated by
the terror of their arms, or from a partial fondness
for the British constitution, or deluded by insidiou-

66 GOVERNOR LIVINGSTON'S SPEECH TO

propositions, are secretly abetting, or open'y aiding
their machinations to deprive us of that libeity, with
out which man is a beast, and government a curse.

Besides the inexpressible baseness of wishing to
rise on the ruins of our country, or to acquire riches
at the expense of the liberties and fortunes of millions
of our fellow-citizens, how soon would these delusive
dreams, upon the conquest of America, end in disap
pointment? For where is the fund to recompense
those retainers to the 'British army ? Was every es
tate in America to be confiscated, and converted into
cash, the product would not satiate the avidity of their
national dependants, nor furnish an adequate repast
for the keen appetites of their own ministerial bene
ficiaries. Instead of gratuities and promotion, these
unhappy accomplices in their tyranny, would meet
with supercilious looks and cold disdain; and, after
tedious attendance, be finally told by their haughty
masters, that they, indeed, approved the treason, but
despised the traitor. Insulted, in fine, by their pre
tended protectors, but real betrayers, and goaded with
the stings of their own consciences, they would remain
the frightful monuments of contempt and divine indig
nation, and linger out the rest of their days in self-con
demnation and remorse; and, in weeping over the
ruins of their country, which themselves had been in
strumental in reducing to desolation and bondage.

Others there are, who, terrified by the power of Bri
tain, have persuaded themselves, that she is not only
formidable, but irresistible. That her power is great,
is beyond question ; that it is not to be despised, is
the dictate of common prudence. But, then, we
ought also to consider her, as weak in council, and in
gulfed in debt ; reduced in her trade ; reduced in her
revenue ; immersed in pleasure ; enervated with luxu
ry ; and, in dissipation and venality, surpassing all
Europe. We ought to consider her as hated by a po
tent rival, her natural enemy, and particularly exaspe
rated by her imperious conduct in the last war. as well

THE LEGISLATURE OF NEW JERSEY, 1777. 67

as her insolent manner of commencing it ; and thence
inflamed with resentment, and only watching a favora
ble juncture for open hostilities. We ought to consi
der the amazing expense and difficulty of transporting
troops and provisions above three thousand miles,
with the impossibility of recruiting their army at a less
distance ; save only with such recreants, whose con
scious guilt must, at the first approach of danger, ap
pal the stoutest heart. Those insuperable obstacles
are known and acknowledged by every virtuous and
impartial man in the nation. Even the author of this
horrid war, is incapable of concealing his own confu
sion and distress. Too great to be wholly suppress
ed, it frequently discovers itself in the course of his
speech — a speech terrible in word, and fraught with
contradiction; breathing threatenings and betraying
terror ; a motley mixture of magnanimity and conster
nation, of grandeur and abasement. With troops in
vincible, he dreads a defeat, and wants reinforcements.
Victorious in America, and triumphant on the ocean,
he is a humble dependant on a petty prince; and ap
prehends an attack upon his own metropolis; and,
with full confidence in the friendship and alliance of
France, he trembles upon his throne at her secret de
signs and open preparations.

With all this, we ought to contrast the numerous
and hardy sons of America, inured to toil, seasoned
alike to heat and cold, hale, robust, patient of fatigue,
and, from their ardent love of liberty, ready to face
danger and death ; the immense extent of continent,
which our infatuated enemies have undertaken to
subjugate; the remarkable unanimity of its inhabi
tants, notwithstanding the exception of a few apos
tates and deserters; their unshaken resolution to
maintain their freedom or perish in the attempt; the
fertility of our soil in all kinds of provisions necessary
for the support of war; our inexhaustible internal re
sources for military stores and naval armaments ; our
comparative economy in public expenses: and the

GO GOVERNOR LIVINGSTON'S SPEECH TO

Millions, we save by having reprobated the further ex
change df;our valuable staples for the worthless bau
bles and finery of English manufacture. Add to this,
that in a cause so just and righteous on our part, we
have the highest reason to expect the blessing of
heaven upon our glorious conflict. For, who can
doubt the interposition of the Supremely Just, in favor
of a people, forced to recur to arms in defence of every
thing dear and precious, against a nation deaf to our
complaints, rejoicing in our misery, wantonly ag
gravating our oppressions, determined to divide our
substance, and, by fire and sword, to compel us into
submission ?

Respecting the constitution of Great Britain, bating
certain royal prerogatives of dangerous tendency, it
has been applauded by the best judges; and displays,
in its original structure, illustrious proofs of wisdom
and the knowledge of human nature. But what avails
the best constitution with the worst administration?
For, what is their present government, and what has
it been for years past, but a pensioned confederacy
against reason, and virtue, and honor, and patriotism,
and the rights of man ? What were their leaders,
but a set of political craftsmen, flagitiously conspiring
to erect the babel, despotism, upon the ruins of the
ancient and beautiful fabric of law; a shameless ca
bal, notoriously employed in deceiving the prince, cor
rupting the parliament, debasing the people, depress
ing the most virtuous, and exalting the most profli
gate ; in short, an insatiable junto of public spoilers,
lavishing the national wealth, and, by peculation and
plunder, accumulating a debt already enormous ? And
what was the majority of their parliament, formerly
the most august assembly in the world, but venal
pensioners to the crown; a perfect mockery of all
popular representation ; and, at the absolute devotion
of every minister ? What were the characteristics of
their administration of the provinces ? The substitu
tion of regal instructions in the room of law ; the mul-

THE LEGISLATURE OF NEW JERSEY, 1777. 69

tiplication of officers to strengthen the court interest;
perpetually extending the prerogatives of the king,
and retrenching the rights of the subject ; advancing
to the most eminent stations men, without education,
and of the most dissolute manners ; employing, with
the people's money, a band of emissaries to misrepre
sent and traduce the people ; and, to crown the system
of misrule, sporting our persons and estates, by filling
the highest seats of justice with bankrupts, bullies
and blockheads.

From such a nation, (though all this we bore, and
should perhaps have borne for another century, had
they not avowedly claimed the unconditional disposal
of life and property,) it is evidently our duty to be
detached. To remain happy or safe, in our connexion
with her, became thenceforth utterly impossible. She
is moreover precipitating her own fall, or the age of
miracles is returned, and Britain a phenomenon in the
political world, without a parallel. The proclamations
to ensnare the timid and credulous, are beyond expres
sion disingenuous and tantalizing. In a gilded pill they
conceal real poison : they add insult to injury. After
repeated intimations of commissioners to treat with
America, we are presented, instead of the peace
ful olive-branch, with the devouring sword: instead
of being visited by plenipotentiaries to bring mat
ters to an accommodation, we are invaded by an
army, in their opinion, able to subdue us. And upon
discovering their error, the terms propounded amount
to this : " If you will submit without resistance, we
are content to take your property, and spare your
lives ; and then (the consummation of arrogance !) we
will graciously pardon you, for having hitherto de
fended both." '

Considering, then, their bewildered councils, their
blundering ministry, their want of men and money,
their impaired credit and declining commerce, their
lost revenues and starving islands, the corruption of
their parliament, with the effeminacy of their nation,

VOL. v, 10

70 GOVERNOR LIVINGSTON'S SPEECH TO

and the success of their enterprize is against all proba
bility. Considering further, the horrid enormity of
their waging war against their own brethren, expostu
lating for an audience, complaining of injuries, and
supplicating for redress, and waging it with a ferocity
and vengeance unknown to modern ages, and contrary
to all laws, human and divine; and we can neither
question the justice of our opposition, nor the assist
ance of heaven to crown it with victory.

Let us not, however, presumptuously rely on the inter
position of providence, without exerting those efforts
which it is our duty to exert, and which our bountiful
Creator has enabled us to exert. Let us do our part to
open the next campaign with redoubled vigor; and
until the United States have humbled the pride of
Britain, and obtained an honorable peace, cheerfully
furnish our proportion for continuing the war — a war,
founded, on our side, in the immutable obligation of
self-defence, arid in support of freedom, of virtue,
and every thing tending to ennoble our nature, and
render a people happy; on their part, prompted by
boundless avarice, and a thirst for absolute sway, and
built on a claim repugnant to every principle of reason
and equity — a claim subversive to all liberty, natural,
civil, moral and religious ; incompatible with human
happiness, and usurping the attributes of Deity, degrad
ing man and blaspheming God.

Let us all, therefore, of every rank and degree, re
member our plighted faith and honor, to maintain the
cause with our lives and fortunes. Let us inflexibly
persevere in prosecuting, to a happy period, what has
been so gloriously begun, arid hitherto so prosperously
conducted. And let those, in more distinguished sta
tions, use all their influence and authority, to rouse the
supine, to animate the irresolute, to confirm the
wavering, and to draw from his lurking hole the
skulking neutral, who, leaving to others the heat and
burden of the day, means in the final result to reap the
fruits of that victory, for which he will not contend.

THE LEGISLATURE OF NEW JERSEY, 1777. 71

Let us be peculiarly assiduous in bringing to condign
punishment those detestable parricides, who have
been openly active against their country. And may
we, in all our deliberations and proceedings, be influ
enced and directed by the great Arbiter of the fate of
nations, by whom empires rise and fall, and who will
not always suffer the sceptre of the wicked to rest on
the lot of the righteous, but in due time avenge an in
jured people on their unfeeling oppressor, and his
bloody instruments.

AN ORATION

DELIVERED JULY 4,

BEFORE THE SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI OF THE STATE

OF NEW-YORK; IN COMMEMORATION OF THE INDE

PENDENCE OF AMERICA,

BY ROBERT LIVINGSTON.

I COULD have wished, gentlemen, that the task I am
now about to perform, had been assigned to some abler
speaker ; and in that view, I, long since, tendered my
apology for declining it, and hoped, till lately, that it
had been accepted. Disappointed in this hope, and
unwilling to treat any mark of your favor with neglect,
I determined to obey your commands, although I was
satisfied, that, in the execution of them, I should not
answer your expectations. There is a style of eloquence
adapted to occasions of this kind, to which I feel my
self unequal ; a style which requires the glowing imagi
nation of younger speakers, who, coming recently from
the schools of rhetoric, know how to dress their senti
ments in all its flowery ornaments. The turbulence of
the times, since I first entered upon public life, and the
necessity, they imposed upon those who engaged in
them, of attending rather to things than words, will,
1 fear, render me, if not a useless, at least an unpolish
ed speaker.

If the mind dwells with pleasure on interesting
events ; if the soul pants to emulate the noble deeds it
contemplates ; if virtue derives new force from the suc
cessful struggles of the virtuous, it is wise to set apart
certain seasons, when, freed from meaner cares, we
commemorate events, which have contributed to the
happiness of mankind, or afford examples worthy their

MR. LIVINGSTON'S ORATION, JULY 4, 1787. 73

imitation. What are we this day called upon to com
memorate ? Some signal victory, in which the victor
weeps the loss of friends, and humanity mourns over the
graves of the vanquished? The birth of some prince,
whom force, fraud, or accident, has entitled to a throne ?
Or even that of some patriot, who has raised the repu
tation, and defended the rights of his country ? No,
gentlemen, a nobler subject than the splendor of victo
ries, or the birth of princes, demand our attention.
We are called upon to commemorate the successful
battles of freedom, and the birth of nations.

It may be expected, and indeed I believe it is usual on
such occasions, that I should tread the steps we have ta
ken from the dawn of oppression to the bright sunshine
of independence ; that I should celebrate the praise of
patriots who have been actors in the glorious scene ;
and more particularly that I should lead you to the
shrines of those that have offered up their lives in sup
port of their principles, and sealed with their blood
your charters of freedom. Had I no other object in
view than to amuse you and indulge my own feelings,
I should take this path. For what task more delight
ful, than to contemplate the successful struggles of vir
tue ; to see it, at one moment, panting under the grasp
of oppression, and rising in the next with renewed
strength ; as if, like the giant son of earth, she had ac
quired vigor from the fall; to see hope and disappoint
ment, plenty and want, defeats and victories, following
each other in rapid succession, and contributing, like
light and shade to the embellishment of the piece !
What more soothing to the soft and delicate emotions
of humanity, than to wander, with folded arms and
slow and pensive step, amidst the graves of departed
heroes, to indulge the mingled emotions of grief and
admiration ; at one moment, giving way to private sor
row, and lamenting the loss of a friend, a relation, a bro
ther ; in the next, glowing with patriot warmth, gazing
with ardor on their wounds, and invoking their spirits,
while we ask of heaven to inspire us with equal forti
tude ! But, however pleasing this task, the desire of

74 MR. LIVINGSTOiN'S ORATION, JULY 4, 1787.

being useful impels me, at this interesting moment, to
forego this pleasure ; to call you from this tender scene ;
to remind you that you are the citizens of a free state;
to bid you rejoice with Roman pride, that those you
love have done their duty ; to exhort you to crown the
glorious work they have begun ; for, alas ! my friends,
though they have nobly performed the part assigned
them, the work is still unfinished, and much remains
for us to do. It may not, therefore, be improper, amidst
the congratulations I make you on this day — this day,
distinguished, in the annals of fame, for the triumph
of freedom and the birth of nations, to inquire how far
it has been productive of the advantages we might
reasonably have expected, and where they have fallen
short of our expectations.

To investigate the causes that have conduced to
our disappointment, two objects demand o sr atten
tion ; our internal and federal governments : either, to
those who are disposed to view only the gloomy side of
the picture, will afford sufficient matter for censure,
and too much cause of uneasiness. Many desponding
spirits, misled by their reflections, have ceased to re
joice in independence, and to doubt whether it is to
be considered as a blessing. God forbid that there
should be any such among us. For, whatever may be
the pressure of our present evils, they will cease to
operate, when we resolve to remove them ; the remedy
is within our reach, and I have sufficient confidence in
our fortitude to hope that it will be applied.

Let those, however, who know not the value of our
present situation, contrast it with the state of ser
vitude, to which we should have been reduced, had
we patiently submitted to the yoke of Britain. She
had long since seen our ease with envy, and our
strength with jealousy. Loaded with debt, she wish
ed to share that affluence, which she attributed to her
protection, rather than to our industry. Tenacious of
her supposed supremacy, she could not be indifferent
to those increasing numbers which threatened its sub
version. Avarice and timidity concurred in framing

MR. LIVINGSTON'S ORATION, JULY 4, 178?. 75

a system of despotism, which, but for our resistance,
would have reduced us to the vilest subjection. Hav
ing resisted, accommodation was vain; pretences
would not have been wanting to ruin those that had
been active in opposition. Disputes among ourselves
would have been encouraged ; and advantages deriv
ed from our disunion, would have enabled her ultimately
to attain her object. No alternative was left, but in
dependence, or abject submission. We have chosen
as became a wise and generous people. Let slaves
or cowards disapprove the choice.

Our constitutions are formed to insure the happi
ness of a virtuous nation. They guard against the
tumult and confusion of unwieldy popular assemblies,
while they yield to every citizen his due share of
power. They preserve the administration of justice
pure and unbiassed, by the independence of the
judges. They prevent abuses in the execution of
the laws, by committing the care of enforcing them
to magistrates, who have no share in making, nor
voice in expounding them. In these circumstances,
they excel the boasted models of Greece, or Rome,
and those of all other nations, in having precisely
marked out the power of the government, and the
rights of the people. With us the law is written : no
party can justify their errors under former abuses or
doubtful precedents. With these constitutions, I
shall be asked, how it has happened, that the evils,
hinted at, continue to exist ? I shall endeavor to an
swer this inquiry, since my object in treating of this
subject is to impress upon you the obligations we are
under as citizens, as men whose past services entitle
us to some weight in the community, zealously to unite
in promoting a constitutional reform of every abuse,
that affects the government.

Our constitutions being purely democratic, the peo
ple are sovereign and absolute. The faults of abso
lute governments are to be charged to the sovereign :
in ours, they must be traced back to the people.

•

76 MR. LIVINGSTON'S ORATION, JULY 4, 1787.

If our executive has sufficient energy, if the judicial
is competent to the administration of justice, if our
legislative is so formed as that no law can pass with
out due deliberation, all the ends of government are
answered, so far as they depend upon the constitution.
If still it falls short of expectation, the evils must be
sought in the administration: and since every person,
concerned in that, is either mediately or immediately
chosen by the people, they may change it at pleasure.
What can be devised more perfect than that constitu
tion, which puts in the power of those, who experience
the effects of a maladministration, to prevent their
continuance; not by mad, tumultuous and irregular
acts, as in the ancient republics, but by such as are
cool, deliberate and constitutional? If they still exist,
they must be charged to the negligence of the people,
who, after violent agitation, have sunk into such a
state of torpor and indifference with respect to gov
ernment, as to be careless into what bands they trust
their dearest rights. When we choose an agent to
manage our private affairs, an executor to distribute
bur estate, we fire solicitous about the integrity and
abilities of those we entrust: we consult our friends:
we make the choice after due deliberation. Is it not
astonishing, that, when we are to elect men, whose
power extends to our liberty, our property and our
lives, we should be so totally indifferent, that not
one in ten of us tenders his vote ? Can it be thought,
that an enlightened people believe the science of gov
ernment level to the meanest capacity — that expe
rience, application and education are unnecessary to
those who are to frame laws for the government of
the state ? And yet, are instances wanting in which
these have been proscribed and their place supplied
by those insidious arts, which have rendered them sus
pected? Are past services the passport to future ho
nors ? Or, have you yourselves, gentlemen, escaped
the general obloquy ? Are you not calumniated by
those you deem unworthy of your society ? Are you

MR. LIVINGSTON'S ORATION, JULY 4, 1787. 77

not even shunned by some who should wear with pride
and pleasure this badge of former services ?

You have learned in the school of adversity to ap
preciate characters. You are not formed, whoever
may direct, to promote measures you disapprove.
Men, used to command and to obey, are sensible of
the value of government, and will not consent to its
debasement. Your services entitle you to the respect
and favor of a grateful people. Envy and the ambi
tion of the unworthy, concur to rob you of the rank
you merit.

To these causes, we owe the cloud that obscures
our internal governments. But let us not despair:
the sun of science is beginning to rise ; and, as new
light breaks in upon the minds of our fellow-citizens,
that cloud will be dispelled.

Having observed, that our internal constitutions are
adequate to the purposes for which they were formed,
and that the inconveniences, we have some time felt
under them, were imputable to causes which it was in
our power to remove, I might perhaps add, that the
continuance of those evils, is a proof of the happi
ness these governments impart ; since, had they not
been more than balanced by advantages, they would
have pressed with such weight, as to have compelled
the people to apply the remedy, the constitution affords.
But, when I turn my eyes to the other great object of
a patriot's attention, our federal government, I con
fess to you, my friends, I sicken at the sight. Nothing
presents itself to my view, but a nerveless council,
united by imaginary ties, brooding over ideal decrees,
which caprice, or fancy, is, at pleasure, to annul, or
execute ! I see trade languish ; public credit expire ;
and that glory, which is not less necessary to the pros
perity of a nation, than reputation to individuals, a
victim to opprobrium and disgrace. Here, my friends,
you are particularly interested ; for, I believe, I should
do little justice to the motives that induced you to
brave the dangers and hardships of a ten years' war.

V. 1 1

78 MR. LIVINGSTON'S ORATION, JULY 4, 1787.

if I supposed you had nothing more in view, than hum-
ble peace and ignominious obscurity. Brave souls are
influenced by nobler motives ; and, I persuade myself,
that the rank and glory of the nation, you have es
tablished, were among the strongest that nerved your
arms, and invigorated your hearts. Let us not, then,
my friends, loose sight of this splendid object; having
pursued it through fields of blood, let us not relinquish
the chase, when nothing is necessary to its attainment,
but union, firmness and temperate deliberation.

In times of extreme danger, whoever has the cour
age to seize the helm, may command the ship : each
mariner, distrusting his own skill, is ready to repose
upon that of others. Congress, not attending to this
reflection, were misled by the implicit respect, that,
during the war, was paid to their recom merdat^ons;
and without looking forward to times, when the cir
cumstances, which made the basis of their authority,
should no longer exist, they formed a constitution only
adapted to such circumstances. Weak in itself, a
variety of causes have conspired to render it weaker.
Some states have totally neglected their representa
tion in Congress ; while some others have been inat
tentive, in their choice of delegates, to those qualities,
which are essential to the support of its reputation :
objects of some moment, where authority is founded
on opinion only. To these, I am sorry, gentlemen, to
add a third, which operates with peculiar force in some
states : the love of power, of which the least worthy
are always the most tenacious. To deal out a por
tion of it to Congress, would be to share that which
some, among those who are elected by popular favor,
already find too little for their own ambition. To
preserve it, rulers of free states practise a lesson they
have received from eastern tyrants ; and, as these, to
preserve the succession, put out the eyes of all, that
may approach the seat of power, so those strive to
blind the people, whose discernment, they fear, may
expel them from it.

MR. LIVINGSTON'S ORATION, JULY 4, 1787. 79

I will not wear your patience and my own, by contend
ing with those chimeras they have raised, to fright the
people from remedying the -only real defect of this
government. Nor will I dwell upon that wretched
system of policy, which has sunk the interest and re
putation of such states in the great council of America,
and drawn upon them the hatred and contempt of their
neighbors. Who will deny, that the most serious
evils daily flow from the debility of our federal con
stitution ? Who but owns, that we are, at this mo
ment, colonies, for every purpose but that of internal
taxation, to the nation from which we vainly hoped our
sword had freed us ? Who but sees, with indigna
tion, British ministers daily dictating laws for the
destruction of our commerce ? Who but laments the
ruin of that brave, hardy and generous race of men,
who are necessary for its support ? Who but feels,
that we are degraded from the rank we ought to hold
among the nations of the earth ? Despised by some,
maltreated by others, and unable to defend ourselves
against the cruel depredations of the most contempti
ble pirates. At this moment, yes, great God ! at this
moment, some among those, perhaps, who have labor
ed for the establishment of our freedom, are groaning
in barbarian bondage. Hands, that may have wielded
the sword in our defence, are loaded with chains.
Toilsome tasks, gloomy prisons, whips and tortures,
are the portion of men, who have triumphed with us,
and exulted in the idea of giving being to nations, and
freedom to unnumbered generations !

These, sirs, these are a few of the many evils that
result from the want of a federal government. Our
internal constitutions may make us happy at home, but
nothing short of a federal one can render us safe or
respectable abroad. Let us not, however, in our ea
gerness to attain one, forget to preserve the other in
violate ; for better is distress abroad, than tyranny and
anarchy at home. A precious deposit is given into
our keeping : we hold in our hands the fate of future

80 MR. LIVINGSTON'S ORATION, JULY 4, 1787.

generations. While we acknowledge, that no govern
ment can exist, without confidence in the governing
power, let us also remember, that none can remain
free, where that confidence is incautiously bestowed,
How, gentlemen, shall I apologize for having ob
truded this serious address upon the gayeties of this
happy day ? I told you, and told you truly, that I was
ill qualified to play the holiday orator ; and I might
have added, that the joy of this day is ever attended, in
my mind, with a thousand mingled emotions. Reflec
tion on the past brings to memory a variety of tender
and interesting events; while hope and fear, anxiety
and pleasure, alternately possess me, when I endeavor
to pierce the veil of futurity. But never, never before,
have they pressed upon me with the weight they do at
present. I feel that some change is necessary ; and
yet I dread, lest the demon of jealousy should prevent
such change; or the restless spirit of innovation,
should carry us beyond what is necessary. I look
round for aid; I see in you a band of patriots — the
supporters of your country's rights : I feel myself in
debted to you for the freedom we enjoy : I know, that
your emotions cannot be different from my own ; and
I strive, by giving you the same views on these im
portant subjects, to unite your efforts in the common
cause. Let us, then, preserve pure and perfect, those
principles of friendship for each other, of love for our
country, of respect for the union, which supported us
in our past difficulties. Let us reject the trammels of
party ; and, as far as our efforts will go, call every man
to the post, his virtues and abilities entitle him to oc
cupy. Let us watch, with vigilant attention, over the
conduct of those in power ; but let us not, with coward
caution, restrain their efforts to be useful ; and let us
implore that omnipotent Being, who gave us strength
and wisdom in the hour of danger, to direct our great
council to that happy mean, which may afford us re
spect and security abroad, and peace, liberty and
prosperity at home.

THE ADDRESS

OP THE

TWELVE UNITED COLONIES, BY THEIR DELEGATES IN CON
GRESS, TO THE INHABITANTS OF GREAT BRITAIN I

BY RICHARD HENRY LEE,* 1775.

FRIENDS, COUNTRYMEN AND BRETHREN!

BY these, and by every other appellation that may
designate the ties which bind us to each other, we en
treat your serious attention to this our second attempt
to prevent their dissolution. Remembrance of former
friendships, pride in the glorious achievements of our
common ancestors, and affection for the heirs of their
virtues, have hitherto preserved our mutual connexion;
but when that friendship is violated by the grossest in
juries ; when the pride of ancestry becomes our re
proach, and we are no otherwise allied than as tyrants
and slaves ; when reduced to the melancholy alterna
tive of renouncing your favor or our freedom ; can we
hesitate about the choice ? Let the spirit of Britons
determine.

In a former address, we asserted our rights, and
stated the injuries we had then received. We hoped,
that the mention of our wrongs would have roused
that honest indignation which has slept too long for
your honor or the welfare of the empire. But we have
not been permitted to entertain this pleasing expecta-

* Of the numerous speeches in Congress, and popular addresses,
of" the American Cicero," none are extant which justify his high
reputation as an orator. This address to the inhabitants of Great
Britain, is undoubtedly the production of his pen, and to use the
words of his biographer, " is an imperishable monument to his gen
ius and eloquence." — COMPILER.

82 THE ADDRESS OF CONGRESS TO THE

tion. Every day brought an accumulation of injuries,
and the invention of the ministry has been constantly
exercised in adding to the calamities of your American
brethren.

After the most valuable right of legislation was in
fringed ; when the powers, assumed by your parliament,
in which we are riot represented, and from our local
and other circumstances, cannot properly be represent
ed, rendered our property precarious ; after being de
nied that mode of trial, to which we have long been in
debted for the safety of our persons, and the preserva
tion of our liberties ; after being, in many instances, di
vested of those laws which were transmitted to us by
our common ancestors, and subjected to an arbitrary
code, compiled under the auspices of Roman tyrants ;
after those charters, which encouraged our predeces
sors to brave death and danger in every shape, on un
known seas, in deserts unexplored, amidst barbarous
and inhospitable nations, were annulled ; when, with
out the form of trial, without a public accusation,
whole colonies were condemned, their trade destroyed,
their inhabitants impoverished; when soldiers were
encouraged to imbrue their hands in the blood of
Americans, by offers of impunity; when new modes of
trial were instituted for the ruin of the accused, where
the charge carried with it the horrors of conviction ;
when a despotic government was established in a
neighboring province, and its limits extended to every
of our frontiers ; we little imagined that anything could
be added to this black catalogue of unprovoked inju
ries : but we have unhappily been deceived, and the
late measures of the British ministry fully convince us,
that their object is the reduction of these colonies to
slavery and ruin.

To confirm this assertion, let us recall your attention
to the affairs of America, since our last address. Let
us combat the calumnies of our enemies ; and let us
warn you of the dangers that threaten you in our de
struction. Many of your fellow subjects, whose situa-

INHABITANTS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 83

tion deprived them of other support, drew their mainte
nance from the sea ; but the deprivation of our liberty
being insufficient to satisfy the resentment of our ene
mies, the horrors of famine were superadded : and a
British parliament, who, in better times, were the pro
tectors of innocence, and the patrons of humanity, have,
without distinction of age or sex, robbed thousands of
the food which they were accustomed to draw from
that inexhaustible source, placed in their neighbor
hood by the benevolent Creator.

Another act of your legislature shuts our ports, and
prohibits our trade with any but those states, from whom
the great law of self-preservation renders it absolutely
necessary we should at present withhold our com
merce. But this act, (whatever may have been its
design,) we consider rather as injurious to your opu
lence than our interest. All our commerce terminates
with you ; and the wealth, we procure from other na
tions, is soon exchanged for your superfluities. Our
remittances must then cease with our trade ; and our
refinements with our affluence. We trust, however,
that laws, which deprive us of every blessing but a soil
that teems with the necessaries of life, and that lib
erty, which renders the enjoyment of them secure, will
not relax our vigor in their defence.

We might here observe on the cruelty and inconsist
ency of those, who, while they publicly brand us with
reproachful and unworthy epithets, endeavor to de
prive us of the means of defence, by their interposition
with foreign powers, and to deliver us to the lawless
ravages of a merciless soldiery. But happily we are
not without resources ; and though the timid and hu
miliating applications of a British ministry should pre
vail with foreign nations, yet industry, prompted by
necessity, will riot leave us without the necessary sup
plies.

We could wish to go no further, and, not to wound
the ear of humanity, leave untold those rigorous acts
of oppression, which are daily exercised in the town of

«4 THE ADDRESS OF CONGRESS TO THE

Boston, did we not hope, that by disclaiming their
deeds, and punishing the perpetrators, you would short
ly vindicate the honor of the British name, and re-es
tablish the violated laws of justice.

That once populous, flourishing and commercial
town, is now garrisoned by an army, sent not to pro
tect, but to enslave its inhabitants. The civil gov
ernment is overturned, and a military despotism erect
ed upon its ruins. Without law, without right, pow
ers are assumed unknown to the constitution. Pri
vate property is unjustly invaded. The inhabitants,
daily subjected to the licentiousness of the soldiery,
are forbid to remove, in defiance of their natural rights,
in violation of the most solemn compacts. Or, if after
long and wearisome solicitation, a pass is procured,
their effects are detained, and even those who are
most favored, have no alternative but poverty or slave
ry. The distress of many thousand people, wantonly
deprived of the necessaries of life, is a subject, on
which we would not wish to enlarge.

Yet we cannot but observe, that a British fleet, (un
justified even by acts of your legislature,) are daily
employed in ruining our commerce, seizing our ships,
and depriving whole communities of their daily bread.
Nor will a regard for your honor permit us to be si
lent, while British troops sully your glory, by actions,
which the most inveterate enmity will not palliate
among civilized nations — the wanton and unnecessary
destruction of Charlestown, a large, ancient and once
populous town, just before deserted by its inhabitants,
who had fled to avoid the fury of your soldiery.

If still you retain those sentiments of compassion, by
which Britons have ever been distinguished; if the
humanity, which tempered the valor of our common
ancestors, has not degenerated into cruelty, you will
lament the miseries of their descendants.

To what are we to attribute this treatment ? If to
any secret principle of the constitution, let it be men
tioned ; let us learn, that the government we have long

INHABITANTS OF GREAT BRITAIN. Jj;>

revered, is not without its defects, and that while it
gives freedom to a part, it necessarily enslaves the re
mainder of the empire. If such a principle exists, why
for ages has it ceased to operate ? Why at this time
is it called into action ? Can no reason be assigned
for this conduct ? Or must it be resolved into the
wanton exercise of arbitrary power ? And shall the
descendants of Britons tamely submit to this ? No, sirs,
we never will, while we revere the memory of our
gallant and virtuous ancestors, we never can surren
der those glorious privileges, for which they fought,
bled and conquered. Admit that your fleets could de
stroy our towns, and ravage our sea-coasts ; these are
inconsiderable objects, things of no moment to men
whose bosoms glow with the ardor of liberty. We
can retire beyond the reach of your navy, and, without
any sensible diminution of the necessaries of life, en
joy a luxury, which from that period you will want —
the luxury of being free.

We know the force of your arms, and was it called
forth in the cause of justice and your country, we might
dread the exertion; but will Britons fight under the
banners of tyranny ? Will they counteract the labors,
and disgrace the victories of their ancestors ? Will
they forge chains for their posterity ? If they descend to
this unworthy task, will their swords retain their edge,
their arms their accustomed vigor ? Britons can ne
ver become the instruments of oppression, till they lose
the spirit of freedom, by which alone they are in
vincible.

Our enemies charge us with sedition. In what does
it consist ? In our refusal to submit to unwarrantable
acts of injustice and cruelty ? If so, show us a perioii
in your history, in which you have not been equally se
ditious.

We are accused of aiming at independence; but
how is this accusation supported ? By the allegations
of your ministers, not by our actions. Abused, insult
ed and contemned, what steps have we pursued to ob~

VOL. v. 12

86 THE ADDRESS OF CONGRESS TO THE

tain redress ? We have carried our dutiful petitions
to the throne. We have applied to your justice for re
lief. We have retrenched our luxury, and withheld our
trade.

The advantages of our commerce were designed
as a compensation for your protection. When you
ceased to protect, for what were we to compensate ?

What has been the success of our endeavors ? The
clemency of our sovereign is unhappily diverted ; our
petitions are treated with indignity; our prayers an
swered by insults. Our application to you remains
unnoticed, and leaves us the melancholy apprehension
of your wanting either the will, or the power, to as
sist us.

Even under these circumstances, what measures have
we taken that betray a desire of independence ? Have
we called in the aid of those foreign powers, who are
the rivals of your grandeur? When your troops were
few and defenceless, did we take advantage of their
distress and expel them our towns ? Or have we per
mitted them to fortify, to receive new aid, and to ac
quire additional strength ?

Let not your enemies and ours persuade you, that in
this we were influenced by fear, or any other unworthy
motive. The lives of Britons are still dear to us. They
are the children of our parents, and an uninterrupted
intercourse of mutual benefits had knit the bonds of
friendship. When hostilities were commenced, when,
on a late occasion, we were wantonly attacked by your
troops, though we repelled their assaults and returned
their blows, yet we lamented the wounds they obliged us
to give ; nor have we yet learned to rejoice at a victory
over Englishmen.

As we wish not to color our actions, or disguise our
thoughts, we shall, in the simple language of truth
avow the measures we have pursued, the motives upon
which we have acted, and our future designs.

When our late petition to the throne produced no
other effect than fresh injuries, and votes of vour legis-

INHABITANTS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 87

Jature, calculated to justify every severity ; when your
fleets and your armies were prepared to wrest from us
our property, to rob us of our liberties or our lives :
when the hostile attempts of General Gage evinced hi?
d signs, we levied armies for our security and defence.
When the powers vested in the governor of Canada
gave us reason to apprehend danger from that quar
ter ; and we had frequent intimations, that a cruel and
savage enemy was to be let loose upon the defenceless
inhabitants of our frontiers ; we took such measures as
prudence dictated, as necessity will justify. We pos
sessed ourselves of Crown Point and Ticonderoga.
Yet give us leave most solemnly to assure you, that we
have not yet lost sight of the object, we have ever had
in view — a reconciliation with you on constitutional
principles, and a restoration of that friendly intercourse,
which, to the advantage of both, we till lately main
tained.

The inhabitants of this country apply themselves
chiefly to agriculture and commerce. As their fash
ions and manners are similar to yours, your markets
must afford them the conveniences and luxuries, for
which they exchange the produce of their labors.
The wealth of this extended continent centres with
you; and our trade is so regulated as to be subservi
ent only to your interest. You are too reasonable to
expect, that by taxes, (in addition to this,) we should
contribute to your expense ; to believe after diverting
the fountain, that the streams can flow with unabated
force.

It has been said, that we refuse to submit to the re
strictions on our commerce. From whence is this in
ference drawn ? Not from our words, we having re
peatedly declared the contrary ; and we again profess
our submission to the several acts of trade and naviga
tion, passed before the year 1763, trusting, nevertheless,
in the equity and justice of parliament, that such of
them as, upon cool and impartial consideration, shall
appear to have imposed unnecessary or grievous r<v

88 THE ADDRESS OF CONGRESS TO THE

strictions, will, at some happier period, be repealed or
altered. And we cheerfully consent to the operation
of such acts of the British parliament, as shall be re
strained to the regulation of our external commerce,
for the purpose of securing the commercial advan
tages of the whole empire to the mother country, and
the commercial benefits of its respective members ;
excluding every idea of taxation, internal or external,
for raising a revenue on the subjects in America with
out their consent.

It is alleged that we contribute nothing to the com
mon defence. To this we answer, that the advan
tages, which Great Britain receives from the monopo
ly of our trade, far exceed our proportion of the ex
pense necessary for that purpose. But should these
advantages be inadequate thereto, let the restrictions
on our trade be removed, and we will cheerfully con
tribute such proportion when constitutionally required.

It is a fundamental principle of the British constitu
tion, that every man should have at least a representa
tive share in the formation of those laws, by which he
is bound. Were it otherwise, the regulation of our
internal police by a British parliament, who are, and
ever will be, unacquainted with our local circum
stances, must be always inconvenient, and frequently
oppressive, working our wrong, without yielding any
possible advantage to you.

A plan of accommodation, (as it has been absurdly
called,) has been proposed by your ministers to our
respective assemblies. Were this proposal free from
every other objection, but that which arises from the
time of the offer, it would not be unexceptionable.
Can men deliberate with the bayonet at their breast ?
Can they treat with freedom, while their towns are
sacked ; when daily instances of injustice and oppres
sion, disturb the slower operations of reason ?

If this proposal is really such as you would offer, and
we accept, why was it delayed till the nation was put
to useless expense, and we were reduced to our present

INHABITANTS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 89

melancholy situation ? If it holds forth nothing, why
was it proposed ? Unless, indeed, to deceive you into
a belief, that we were unwilling to listen to any terms
of accommodation! But what is submitted to our
consideration? We contend for the disposal of our
property. We are told that our demand is unreasona
ble, that our assemblies may indeed collect our money,
but that they must at the same time offer, not what
your exigencies or ours may require, but so much as
shall be deemed sufficient to satisfy the desires of a
minister, and enable him to provide for favorites and
dependants. A recurrence to your own treasury will
convince you how little of the money, already extorted
from us, has been applied to the relief of your burdens.
To suppose that we would thus grasp the shadow, and
give up the substance, is adding insult to injuries.

We have, nevertheless, again presented an humble
and dutiful petition to our sovereign ; and to remove
every imputation of obstinacy, have requested his ma
jesty to direct some mode, by which the united applica
tions of his faithful colonists may be improved into a
happy and permanent reconciliation. We are willing to
treat on such terms as can alone render an accommo
dation lasting, and we flatter ourselves that our pacific
endeavors will be attended with a removal of ministeri
al troops, and a repeal of those laws, of the operation
of which we complain, on the one part, and a disband
ing of our army, and a dissolution of our commercial
associations, on the other.

Yet conclude not from this that we propose to sur
render our property into the hands of your ministry, or
vest your parliament with a power which may termi
nate in our destruction. The great bulwarks of our
constitution we have desired to maintain by every
temperate, by every peaceable means ; but your minis
ters, (equal foes to British and American freedom,)
have added to their former oppressions an attempt to
reduce us, by the sword, to a base and abject submis
sion. On the sword, therefore, we are compelled to

90 THE ADDRESS OF CONGRESS TO THE

rely for protection. Should victory declare in your
favor, yet men, trained to arms from their infancy, and
animated by the love of liberty, will afford neither a
cheap nor easy conquest. Of this, at least, we are as
sured, that our struggle will be glorious, our success
certain ; since even in death we shall find that freedom
which in life you forbid us to enjoy.

Let us now ask what advantages are to attend our
reduction? The trade of a ruined and desolate
country is always inconsiderable, its revenue trifling ;
the expense of subjecting and retaining it in subjec
tion certain and inevitable. What then remains but
the gratification of an ill-judged pride, or the hope of
rendering us subservient to designs on your liberty ?

Soldiers, who have sheathed their swords in the bow
els of their American brethren, will not draw them
with more reluctance against you. When too late
you may lament the loss of that freedom, which we
exhort you, while still in your power, to preserve.

On the other hand, should you prove unsuccessful ;
should that connexion, which we most ardently wish
to maintain, be dissolved; should your ministers ex
haust your treasures, and waste the blood of your
countrymen, in vain attempts on our liberty; do they
not deliver you, weak and defenceless, to your natural
enemies ?

Since, then, your liberty must be the price of your
victories ; your ruin, of your defeat ; what blind fa
tality can urge you to a pursuit destructive of all that
Britons hold dear ?

If you have no regard to the connexion that has for
ages subsisted between us ; if you have forgot the
wounds we have received fighting by your side for the
extension of the empire ; if our commerce is not an ob
ject below your consideration; if justice and humanity
have lost their influence on your hearts ; still motives
are not wanting to excite your indignation at the mea
sures now pursued: your wealth, your honor, your
libertv are at stake.

INHABITANTS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 91

Notwithstanding the distress to which we are reduc
ed, we sometimes forget our own afflictions, to antici
pate and sympathize in yours. We grieve that rash
and inconsiderate councils should precipitate the d >
struction of an empire, which has been 'the envy
and admiration of ages; and call God to witness! that
we would part with our property, endanger our lives
and sacrifice every thing but liberty, to redeem you
from ruin.

A cloud hangs over your heads and ours ; ere this
reaches you, it may probably burst upon us ; let us then,
(before the remembrance of former kindness is oblite
rated,) once more repeat those appellations which are
ever grateful in our ears ; let us entreat heaven to
avert our ruin, and the destruction that threatens our
friends, brethren and countrymen, on the other side of
the Atlantic.

SPEECH OF WILLIAM PINKNEY.

DELIVERED

IN THE ASSEMBLY OF MARYLAND, AT THEIR SES
SION IN 1788,

When the report of a committee of the House, favorable to a petition
for the relief of the oppressed slaves, was under consideration.

MR. SPEAKER,

BEFORE I proceed to deliver my sentiments on the
subject matter of the report, under consideration, I
must entreat the members of this House to hear me with
patience, and not to condemn what I may happen to
advance in support of the opinion I have formed, until
they shall have heard me out. I am conscious, sir, that
upon this occasion, I have long established principles
to combat, and deep rooted prejudices to defeat ; that
I have fears and apprehensions to silence, which the
acts of former legislatures have sanctioned, and that,
(what is equivalent to a host of difficulties,) the po
pular impressions are against me. But, if I am honor
ed with the same indulgent attention, which the House
has been pleased to afford me, on past subjects of de
liberation, I do not despair of surmounting all these
obstacles, in the common cause of justice,. humanity
and policy. The report appears to me to have two
objects in view : to annihilate the existing restraints
on the voluntary emancipation of slaves, and to re
lieve a particular offspring from the punishment, here
tofore inflicted on them, for the mere transgression
of their parents. To the whole report, separately
and collectively, my hearty assent, my cordial assist
ance, shall be given. It was the policy of this country,
sir, from an early period of colonization, down to

MR. PINKNEY'S SPEECH, &c. 93

the revolution, to encourage an importation of slaves,
for purposes, which, (if conjecture may be indulged,)
had been far better answered without their assistance.
That this inhuman policy was a disgrace to the colony,
a dishonor to the legislature, and a scandal to human
nature, we need not, at this enlightened period, labor
to prove. The generous mind, that has adequate
ideas of the inherent rights of mankind, and knows
the value of them, must feel its indignation rise
against the shameful traffic, that introduces slavery
into a country, which seems to have been designed by
Providence, as an asylum for those whom the arm
of power had persecuted, and not as a nursery for
wretches, stripped of every privilege which heaven in
tended for its rational creatures, and reduced to a level
with — nay, become themselves — the mere goods and
chattels of their masters.

Sir, by the eternal principles of natural justice, no
master in the state has a right to hold his slave in
bondage for a single hour ; but the law of the land,
which, (however oppressive and unjust, however in
consistent with the great groundwork of the late re
volution, and our present frame of government,) we
cannot, in prudence, or from a regard to individual
rights, abolish, has authorized a slavery, as bad, or
perhaps worse than the most absolute, unconditional
servitude that ever England knew, in the early ages
of its empire, under the tyrannical policy of the Danes,
the feudal tenures of the Saxons, or the pure villanage
of the Normans. But, Mr. Speaker, because a respect
for the peace and safety of the community, and the
already injured rights of individuals, forbids a com
pulsory liberation of these unfortunate creatures, shall
we unnecessarily refine upon this gloomy system of
bondage, and prevent the owner of a slave from manu
mitting him, at the only probable period, when the
warm feelings of benevolence, and the gentle workings
of commiseration dispose him to the generous deed ?
Sir, the natural character of Maryland is sufficiently

VOL. v. 13

94 MR. PINKNEY'S SPEECH IN THE

sullied, and dishonored, by barely tolerating slavery ;
but when it is found, that your laws give every possi
ble encouragement to its continuance to the latest ge
nerations, and are ingenious to prevent even its slow
and gradual decline, how is the die of the imputation
deepened? It may even be thought, that our late
glorious struggle for liberty, did not originate in prin
ciple, but took its rise from popular caprice, the rage
of faction, or the intemperance of party. Let it be
remembered, Mr. Speaker, that, even in the days of
feudal barbarity, when the minds of men were unex-
panded by that liberality of sentiment, which springs
from civilization and refinement, such was the antipa
thy, in England, against private bondage, that, so far
from being studious to stop the progress of emancipa
tion, the courts of law, (aided by legislative conni
vance,) were inventive to liberate by construction.
If, for example, a man brought an action against his
villain, it was presumed, that he designed to manumit
him ; and, although perhaps this presumption was, in
ninety-nine instances out of a hundred, contrary to
the fact, yet, upon this ground alone, were bondmen
adjudged to be free.

Sir, I sincerely wish it were in my power to impart
my feelings, upon this subject, to those who hear me ;
they would then acknowledge, that, while the owner
was protected in the property of his slave, he might,
at the same time, be allowed to relinquish that proper
ty to the unhappy subject, whenever he should be so
inclined. They would then feel, that denying this
privilege was repugnant to every principle of humanity
— an everlasting stigma on our government — an act of
unequalled barbarity, without a color of policy, or a
pretext of necessity, to justify it.

Sir, let gentlemen put it home to themselves, that
after Providence has crowned our exertions, in the
cause of general freedom, with success, and led us on
to independence, through a myriad of dangers, and in
defiance of obstacles crowding thick upon each other,
we should not so soon forget the principles upon

LEGISLATURE OF MARYLAND, 1788. 93

which we fled to arms, and lose all sense of that inter
position of heaven, by which alone we could have been
saved from the grasp of arbitrary power. We may
talk of liberty in our public councils ; and fancy, that
we feel reverence for her dictates. We may declaim,
with all the vehemence of animated rhetoric, against
oppression, and flatter ourselves, that we detest the
ugly monster, but so long as we continue to cherish
the poisonous weed of partial slavery among us, the
world will doubt our sincerity. In the name of heaven,
with what face can we call ourselves the friends of
equal freedom, and the inherent rights of our species,
when we wantonly pass laws inimical to each; when
we reject every opportunity of destroying, by silent,
imperceptible degrees, the horrid fabric of individual
bondage, reared by the mercenary hands of those
from whom the sacred flame of liberty received no
devotion ?

Sir, it is pitiable to reflect, to what wild inconsisten
cies, to what opposite extremes we are hurried, by the
frailty of our nature. Long have I been convinced,
that no generous sentiment of which the human heart
is capable, no elevated passion of the soul that digni
fies mankind, can obtain a uniform and perfect do*
minion : to-day we may be aroused as one man, by a
wonderful and unaccountable sympathy, against the
lawless invader of the rights of his fellow-creatures :
to-morrow we may be guilty of the same oppression,
which we reprobated and resisted in another. Is it,
Mr. Speaker, because the complexion of these devoted
victims is not quite so delicate as ours ; is it because
their untutored minds, (humbled and debased by the
hereditary yoke,) appear less active and capacious
than our own ; or, is it, because we have been so ha
bituated to their situation, as to become callous to the
horrors of it, that we are determined, whether politic
or not, to keep them, till time shall be no more, on a
level with the brutes ? For " nothing," says Montes
quieu, " so much assimilates a man to a brute, as living

96 MR. PINKNEY'S SPEECH IN THE

among freemen, himself a slave." Call not Maryland a
land of liberty ; do not pretend, that she has chosen
this country as an asylum — that here she has erected
her temple, and consecrated her shrine, when here, also,
her unhallowed enemy holds his hellish pandemonium
and our rulers offer sacrifice at his polluted altar.
The lily and the bramble may grow in social proxi
mity, but liberty and slavery delight in separation.

Sir, let us figure to ourselves, for a moment, one
of these unhappy victims more informed than the rest,
pleading, at the bar of this House, the cause of himself
and his fellow-sufferers ; what would be the language of
this orator of nature ? Thus, my imagination tells me
he would address us.

"We belong, by the policy of the country, to our
masters; and submit to our rigorous destiny; we do
not ask you to divest them of their property, because
we are conscious you have not the power ; we do not
entreat you to compel an emancipation of us or our
posterity, because justice to your fellow-citizens forbids
it; we only supplicate you not to arrest the gentle
arm of humanity, when it may be stretched forth in
our behalf; nor to wage hostilities against that moral
or religious conviction, which may at any time incline
our masters to give freedom to us, or our unoffending
offspring, not to interpose legislative obstacles to the
course of voluntary manumission. Thus shall you
neither violate the rights of your people, nor endanger
the quiet of the community, while you vindicate your
public councils, from the imputation of cruelty and
the stigma of causeless, unprovoked oppression. We
have never," would he argue, " rebelled against our
masters ; we have never thrown your government into
a ferment by struggles to regain the independence of
our fathers. We have yielded our necks submissive
to the yoke, and, without a murmur, acquiesced in the
privation of our native rights. We conjure you, then,
in the name of the common parent of mankind, re
ward us not, for this long and patient acquiescence, by

LEGISLATURE OF MARYLAND, 1788. 97

shutting up the main avenues to our liberation, by
witholding from us the poor privilege of benefitting
by the kind indulgence, the generous intentions of our
superiors."

What could we answer to arguments like these ?
Silent and peremptory, we might reject the application ;
but no words could justify the deed.

In vain should we resort to apologies, grounded on
the fallacious suggestions of a cautious and timid poli
cy. I would as soon believe the incoherent tale of a
schoolboy, who should tell me he had been frightened
by a ghost, as that the grant of this permission ought
in any degree to alarm us. Are we apprehensive, that
these men will become more dangerous, by becoming
free ? Are we alarmed, lest, by being admitted to the
enjoyment of civil rights, they will be inspired with a
deadly enmity against the rights of others ? Strange,
unaccountable paradox ! How much more rational
would it be, to argue, that the natural enemy of the
privileges of freemen, is he who is robbed of them him
self! In him the foul demon of jealousy converts the
sense of his own debasement into a rancqrous hatred
for the more auspicious fate of others; while from
him, whom you have raised from the degrading situa
tion of a slave, whom you have restored to that rank,
in the order of the universe, which the malignity of
his fortune prevented him from attaining before, from
such a man, (unless his soul be ten thousand times
blacker than his complexion,) you may reasonably
hope for all the happy effects of the warmest gratitude
and love.

Sir, let us not limit our views to the short period of
a life in being ; let us extend them along the continu
ous line of endless generations yet to come, how will
the millions, that now teem in the womb of futurity,
and whom your present laws would doom to the curse
of perpetual bondage, feel the inspiration of gratitude
to those, whose sacred love of liberty shall have open
ed the door to their admission within the pale of free
dom ? Dishonorable to the species is the idea, that

98 MR. PINKNEY'S SPEECH, &c.

they would ever prove injurious to our interests. Re
leased from the shackles of slavery, by the justice of
government, and the bounty of individuals, the want
of fidelity and attachment, would be next to im
possible.

Sir, when we talk of policy, it would be well for us to
reflect, whether pride is not at the bottom of it;
whether we do not feel our vanity and self-consequence
wounded at the idea of a dusty African, participating,
equally with ourselves, in the rights of human nature,
and rising to a level with us, from the lowest point of
degradation. Prejudices of this kind, sir, are often so
powerful, as to persuade us, that whatever counter
vails them, is the extremity of folly, and that the pecu
liar path of wisdom, is that which leads to their grati
fication. But it is for us to be superior to the influence
of such ungenerous motives ; it is for us to reflect,
that whatever the complexion, however ignoble the
ancestry, or uncultivated the mind, one universal fa
ther gave being to them and us ; and, with that being,
conferred the unalienable rights of the species. But I
have heard it argued, that if you permit a master to
manumit his slaves by his last will and testament, as
soon as they discover he has done so, they will destroy
him, to prevent a revocation — never was a weaker de
fence attempted, to justify the severity of persecution ;
never did a bigoted inquisition condemn a heretic to
torture and to death, upon grounds less adequate to
justify the horrid sentence. Sir, is it not obvious, that
the argument applies equally against all devices what
soever, for any person's benefit? For, if an advan
tageous bequest is made, even to a white man, has he
not the same temptation, to cut short the life of his be
nefactor, to secure and accelerate the enjoyment of
the benefit ?

As the universality of this argument renders it com
pletely nugatory, so is its cruelty palpable, by its being
more applicable to other instances, to which it has
never been applied at all, than to the case under con
sideration.

AN ORATION,

PRONOUNCED JULY 4th, 1793,

AT THE REQUEST OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE TOWN OF

BOSTON, IN COMMEMORATION OF THE ANNIVERSARY

OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE,

BY JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

IT has been a custom, sanctioned by the universal
practice of civilized nations, to celebrate, with anni
versary solemnities, the return of the days which have
been distinguished by events the most important to
the happiness of the people. In countries where the
natural dignity of mankind, has been degraded by the
weakness of bigotry, or debased by the miseries of
despotism, this customary celebration has degenerat
ed into a servile mockery of festivity upon the birth
day of a sceptered tyrant, or has dwindled to an un
meaning revel, in honor of some canonized fanatic, of
whom nothing now remains but the name, in the ca
lendar of antiquated superstition. In those more for
tunate regions of the earth where liberty has conde
scended to reside, the cheerful gratitude of her favor
ed people has devoted to innocent gayety and useful
relaxation from the toils of virtuous industry the pe
riodical revolution of those days which have been ren
dered illustrious by the triumphs of freedom.

Americans! such is the nature of the institution
which again calls your attention to celebrate the esta
blishment of your national independence. And surely
since the creation of the heavenly orb which separated
the day from the night, amid the unnumbered events
which have diversified the history of the human race,
none has ever occurred more highly deserving of cele-

100 MR. ADAMS' ORATION, JULY 4, 1793.

bration, by every species of ceremonial, that can testi
fy a sense of gratitude to the Deity, and of happiness,
derived from his transcendent favors.

It is a wise and salutary institution, which forcibly
recalls to the memory of freemen, the principles upon
which they originally founded their laboring plan of
state. It is a sacrifice at the altar of liberty herself;
a renewal of homage to the sovereign, who alone is
worthy of our veneration; a profession of politicfil
fidelity, expressive of our adherence to those maxims
of liberal submission and obedient freedom, which in
these favored climes, have harmonized the long con
tending claims of liberty and law. By a frequent re
currence to those sentiments and actions upon which
the glory and felicity of the nation rest supported, we
are enabled to renew the moments of bliss which we
are not permitted to retain ; we secure a permanency
to the exaltation of what the constitution of nature
has rendered fleeting, arid a perennial existence to en
joyments which the lot of humanity has made tran
sitory.

The " feelings, manners and principles," which led
to the independence of our country; such, my friends
and fellow-citizens, is the theme of our present com
memoration. The field is extensive; it is fruitful:
but the copious treasures of its fragrance have already
been gathered by the hands of genius; and there now
remains for the gleaning of mental indigence, nought
but the thinly scattered sweets which have escaped
the vigilance of their industry.

They were the same feelings, manners and princi
ples, which conducted our venerable forefathers from
the unhallowed shores of oppression ; which inspired
them with the sublime purpose of converting the for
ests of a wilderness into the favorite mansion of liber
ty ; of unfolding the gates of a new world as a refuge
for the victims of persecution in the old : — the feelings
of injured freedom, the manners of social equality, and
the principles of eternal justice.

MR. ADAMS' ORATION, JULY 4, 1793, 101

Had the sovereigns of England pursued the policy
prescribed by their interest, had they not provoked the
hostilities of their colonists against the feeble fortress
of their authority, they might perhaps have retained, to
this day, an empire which would have been but the
more durable, for resting only upon the foundation of
immemorial custom and national affection.

Incumbered, however, with the oppressive glory of
a successful war, which had enriched the pride of Bri
tain with the spoils of her own opulence, and replenish
ed the arrogance in proportion as it had exhausted the
resources of the nation; an adventurous ministry,
catching at every desperate expedient to support the
ponderous burden of the national dignity, and stimu
lated by the perfidious instigations of their dependents
in America, abandoned the profitable commercial po
licy of their predecessors, and superadded to the lu
crative system of monopoly, which we had always tole
rated as the price of their protection, a system of in
ternal taxation from which they hoped to derive a fund
for future corruption, and a supply for future extrava
gance.

The nation eagerly grasped at the proposal. The
situation, the condition, the sentiments of the colonies,
were subjects upon which the people of Britain were
divided between ignorance and error. The endearing
ties of consanguinity, which had connected their an
cestors with those of the Americans, had been gradu
ally loosened to the verge of dissolution, by the slow,
but ceaseless hand of time. Instead of returning the
sentiments of fraternal affection, which animated the
Americans, they indulged their vanity with preposter
ous opinions of insulting superiority : they considered
us, not as fellow-subjects, equally entitled with them
selves, to every privilege of Englishmen, but as wretch
ed outcasts, upon whom they might safely load the
burden, while they reserved to themselves the advan
tages of the national grandeur. It has been observed,
that nations the most highly favored with freedom,

VOL v. 14

102 MR. ADAMS' ORATION, JULY 4, 1793,

have not always been the most friendly to the liberty
of others. The people of Britain expected to feel
none of the oppression, which a parliamentary tyranny
might impose upon the Americans ; on the contrary,
they expected an alleviation of their burden, from the
accumulation of ours, and vainly hoped, that by the
stripes inflicted upon us, their wounds would be healed.

The king — need it be said, that he adopted as the
offspring of his own affections, a plan so favorable to
the natural propensity of royalty towards arbitrary
power ? Depending upon the prostituted valor of his
mercenary legions, he was deaf to the complaints, he
was inexorable to the remonstrances of violated free
dom. Born and educated to the usual prejudices of
hereditary dominion, and habitually accustomed to
the syren song of adulation, he was ready to believe
what the courtly tribe, about his throne, did not fail to
assure him — that complaint was nothing more than
the murmur of sedition, and remonstrance the clamor
of rebellion.

But they knew not the people with whom they had
to contend. A people, sagacious and enlightened to
discern, cool and deliberate to discuss, firm and reso
lute to maintain their rights. From the first appear
ance of the system of parliamentary oppression, under
the form of a stamp-act, it was met by the determin
ed opposition of the whole American continent. The
annals of other nations have produced instances of
successful struggles to break a yoke previously im
posed; but the records of history did not, perhaps,
furnish an example of a people whose penetration had
anticipated the operations of tyranny, and whose spirit
had disdained to suffer an experiment upon their li
berties. The ministerial partizans had flattered them
selves with the expectation, that the Act would execute
itself; that before the hands of freedom could be rais
ed to repel the usurpation, they would be loaded with
fetters ; that the American Samson would be shorn of
his locks while asleep; and when thus bereaved of

MR. ADAMS' ORATION, JULY 4, 1793. 103

his strength, might be made their sport with impuni
ty. Vain illusion ! Instantaneous and forceful as an
electric spark, the fervid spirit of resistance pervaded
every part of the country ; and at the moment, when
the operation of the system was intended to commence,
it was indignantly rejected by three millions of men;
high-minded men, determined to sacrifice their exis
tence, rather than resign the liberty, from which all its
enjoyments were derived.

It is unnecessary to pursue the detail of obstinacy
and cruelty on the one part, of perseverance and forti
tude on the other, until the period when every chord
which had bound the two countries together, was de
stroyed by the violence of reciprocal hostilities, and
the representatives of America, adopted the measure*
which was already dictated by the wishes of their con
stituents ; they declared the United Colonies free, sove
reign and independent states.

Americans ! let us pause for a moment to consider
the situation of our country, at that eventful day when
our national existence commenced. In the full posses
sion and enjoyment of all those prerogatives for which
you then dared to adventure upon " all the varieties of
untried being," the calm and settled moderation of the
mind, is scarcely competent to conceive the tone of
heroism, to which the souls of freemen were exalted in
that hour of perilous magnanimity. Seventeen times
has the sun, in the progress of his annual revolutions,
diffused his prolific radiance over the plains of inde
pendent America. Millions of hearts, which then pal
pitated with the rapturous glow of patriotism, have
already been translated to brighter worlds — to the
abodes of more than mortal freedom. Other millions
have arisen to receive from their parents and benefac
tors, the inestimable recompense of their achievements.
A large proportion of the audience, whose benevo
lence is at this moment listening to the speaker of the
day, like him were at that period too little advanced
beyond the threshold of life to partake of the divine

104 MR. ADAMS' ORATION, JULY 4, 1793.

enthusiasm which inspired the American bosom ; which
prompted her voice to proclaim defiance to the thun
ders of Britain; which consecrated the banners of her
armies ; and finally erected the holy temple of Ameri
can liberty, over the tomb of departed tyranny. It is
from those who have already passed the meridian of
life, it is from you, ye venerable asserters of the rights of
mankind, that we are to be informed, what were the
feelings which swayed within your breasts and impell
ed you to action, when, like the stripling of Israel, with
scarce a weapon to attack and without a shield for
your defence, you met, and undismayed, engaged with
the gigantic greatness of the British power. Untutor
ed in the disgraceful science of human butchery ;
destitute of the fetal materials which the ingenuity of
man has combined, to sharpen the scythe of death ; un
supported by the arm of any friendly alliance ; and un
fortified against the powerful assaults of an unrelenting
enemy, you did not hesitate at that moment, when
your coasts were infested by a formidable fleet, when
your territories were invaded by a numerous and vete
ran army, to pronounce the sentence of eternal separa
tion from Britain, and to throw the gauntlet at a pow
er, the terror of whose recent triumphs was almost co
extensive with the earth. The interested and selfish
propensities, which in times of prosperous tranquillity
have such powerful dominion over the heart, were all
expelled; and in their stead, the public virtues, the
spirit of personal devotion to the common cause, a
contempt of every danger in comparison with the sub
serviency of the country, had assumed an unlimited
control. The passion for the public, had absorbed all
the rest; as the glorious luminary of heaven extin
guishes in a flood of refulgence the twinkling splendor
of every inferior planet. Those of you, my countrymen,
who were actors in those interesting scenes, will best
know, how feeble, and impotent is the language of this
description to express the impassioned emotions of the
soul, with which you were then agitated ; yet it were

MR. ADAMS' ORATION, JULY 4, 1793. 105

injustice to conclude from thence, or from the greater
prevalence of private and personal motives in these days
of calm serenity, that your sons have degenerated from
the virtues of their fathers. Let it rather be a subject
of pleasing reflection to you, that the generous and
disinterested energies, which you were summoned to
display, are permitted by the bountiful indulgence of
heaven to remain latent in the bosoms of your chil
dren. From the present prosperous appearance of
our public affairs, we may admit a rational hope that
our country will have no occasion to require of us
those extraordinary and heroic exertions which it was
your fortune to exhibit. But from the common versa
tility of all human destiny, should the prospect hereafter
datken, and the clouds of public misfortune thicken to
a tempest; should the voice of our country's calamity
ever call us to her relief, we swear by the precious me
mory of the sages who toiled, and of the heroes who bled
in her defence, that we will prove ourselves not unwor
thy the prize, which they so dearly purchased ; that we
will act as the faithful disciples of those who so mag
nanimously taught us the instructive lesson of republi
can virtue.

Seven years of ineffectual hostility, a hundred mil
lions of treasure fruitlessly expended, and uncount
ed thousands of human lives sacrificed to no purpose,
at length taught the dreadful lesson of wisdom to the
British government, and compelled them to relinquish
a claim which they had long since been unable to main
tain. The pride of Britain, which should have been
humbled, was only mortified. With sullen impotence,
she yielded to the pressure of accumulated calami
ty, and closed with reluctance an inglorious war, in
which she had often been the object, and rarely the
actor of a triumph.

The various occurrences of our national history,
since that period, are within the recollection of all my
hearers. The relaxation and debility of the political
body, which succeeded the violent exertions it had

106 MR. ADAMS' ORATION, JULY 4, 1793.

made during the war : the total inefficacy of the re
commendatory federal system, which had been formed
in the bosom of contention : the peaceable and delibe
rate adoption of a more effectual national constitution
by the people of the union, and the prosperous adminis
tration of that government, which has repaired the
shattered fabric of public confidence, which has
strengthened the salutary bands of national union, and
restored the bloom and vigor of impartial justice to
the public countenance, afford a subject of pleasing
contemplation to the patriotic mind. The repeated
unanimity of the nation has placed at the head of the
American councils, the heroic leader, whose prudence
and valor conducted to victory the armies of freedom:
and the two first offices of this commonwealth, still
exhibit the virtues and employ the talents of the vene
rable patriots,* whose firm and disinterested devotion
to the cause of Liberty, was rewarded by the honora
ble distinction of a British proscription. Americans !
the voice of grateful freedom is a stranger to the lan
guage of adulation. While we wish these illustrious
sages to be assured that the memory of their services
is impressed upon all our hearts, in characters, indeli
ble to the latest period of time, we trust that the most
acceptable tribute of respect, which can be offered to
their virtues, is found in the confidence of their coun
trymen. From the fervent admiration of future ages,
when the historians of America, shall trace from their
examples the splendid pattern of public virtue, their
merits will receive a recompense of much more pre
cious estimation than can be conferred by the most
flattering testimonials of contemporaneous applause.
The magnitude and importance of the great event
which we commemorate, derives a vast accession from
its influence upon the affairs of the world, and its ope
ration upon the history of mankind. It has already

* John Hancock and Samuel Adams, the two distinguished leaders
of the republicans in Massachusetts.

MR. ADAMS* ORATION, JULY 4, 1793. 107

been observed that the origin of the American revolu
tion bears a character different from that of any other
civil contest, that has ever arisen among men. It was
not the convulsive struggle of slavery to throw off the
burden of accumulated oppression ; but the deliberate,
though energetic effort of freemen, to repel the insidi
ous approaches of tyranny. It was a contest involving
the elementary principles of government — a question of
right between the sovereign and the subject which, in
its progress, had a tendency to introduce among the
civilized nations of Europe, the discussion of a topic
the first in magnitude, which can attract the attention
of mankind, but which, for many centuries, the gloomy
shades of despotism had overspread with impenetrable
darkness. The French nation cheerfully supported
an alliance with the United States, and a war with
Britain, during the course of which a large body of
troops and considerable fleets were sent by the French
government, to act in conjunction with their new al
lies. The union, which had at first been formed by the
coalescence of a common enmity, was soon strength
ened by the bonds of a friendly intercourse, and the
subjects of an arbitrary prince, in fighting the battles
of freedom, soon learned to cherish the cause of liber
ty itself. By a natural and easy application to them
selves of the principles upon which the Americans as
serted the justice of their warfare, they were led to in
quire into the nature of the obligation which prescrib
ed their submission to their own sovereign ; and when
they discovered that the consent of the people is the
only legitimate source of authority, they necessarily
drew the conclusion, that their own obedience was no
more than the compulsive acquiescence of servitude ;
and they waited only for a favorable opportunity to re
cover the possession of those enjoyments, to which
they had never forfeited the right. Sentiments of a
similar nature, by a gradual and imperceptible pro
gress, secretly undermined all the foundations of their
government ; and when the necessities of the sove-

108 MR. ADAMS' ORATION, JULY 4, 1793.

reign reduced him to the inevitable expedient of ap
pealing to the benevolence of the people, the magic
talisman of despotism was broken, the spell of pre
scriptive tyranny was dissolved, and the pompous pa
geant of their monarchy, instantaneously crumbled to
atoms.

The subsequent European events, which have let
slip the dogs of war, to prey upon the vitals of humani
ty ; which have poured the torrent of destruction over
the fairest harvests of European fertility ; which have
unbound the pinions of desolation, and sent her forth
to scatter pestilence and death among the nations ; the
scaffold smoking with the blood of a fallen monarch ;
the corpse-covered field, where agonizing nature strug
gles with the pangs of dissolution — permit me, my
happy countrymen, to throw a pall over objects like
these, which could only spread a gloom upon the face
of our festivity. Let us rather indulge the pleasing
and rational anticipation of the period, when all the
nations of Europe shall partake of the blessings of
equal liberty and universal peace. Whatever issue
may be destined by the will of heaven, to await the
termination of the present European commotions, the
system of feudal absurdity has received an irrecovera
ble wound, and every symptom indicates its approach
ing dissolution. The seeds of liberty are plentifully
sown. However severe the climate, however barren
the soil of the regions in which they have been receiv
ed, such is the native exuberance of the plant, that it
must eventually flourish with luxuriant profusion. The
governments of Europe must fall ; and the only re
maining expedient in their power, is to gather up their
garments and fall with decency. The bonds of civil
subjection must be loosened by the discretion of civil
authority, or they will be shivered by the convulsive
efforts of slavery itself. The feelings of benevolence
involuntarily make themselves a party to every cir
cumstance that can affect the happiness of mankind ;
they are ever ready to realize the sanguine hope, that

W MK. ADAMS' ORATION, JULY 4, 1793.

the governments to rise upon the ruins of the present
systems, will be immutably founded upon the princi
ples of freedom, and administered by the genuine
maxims of moral subordination and political equality.
We cherish, with a fondness which cannot be chilled
by the cold, unanimated philosophy of scepticism, the
delightful expectation, that the cancer of arbitrary
power will be radically extracted from the human con
stitution ; that the sources of oppression will be drain
ed; that the passions, which have hitherto made the
misery of mankind, will be disarmed of all their vio
lence, and give place to the soft control of mild and
amiable sentiments, which shall unite in social har
mony the innumerable varieties of the human race.
Then shall the nerveless arm of superstition no longer
interpose an impious barrier between the beneficence
of heaven and the adoration of its votaries; then
shall the most distant regions of the earth be approxi
mated by the gentle attraction of a liberal intercourse ;
then shall the fair fabric of universal liberty rise upon
the durable foundation of social equality, and the long
expected era of human felicity, which has been an
nounced by prophetic inspiration, and described in the
most enraptured language of the muses, shall com
mence its splendid progress. Visions of bliss ! with
every breath to heaven we speed an ejaculation, that
the time may hasten, when your reality shall be no
longer the ground of votive supplication, but the
theme of grateful acknowledgment ; when the cho
ral gratulations of the liberated myriads of the elder
world, in symphony, sweeter than the music of the
spheres, shall hail your country, Americans! as the
youngest daughter of Nature, and the first-born off
spring of Freedom.
VOL* v. 15

FAREWELL ADDRESS

OP

PRESIDENT WASHINGTON,
TO THE PEOPLE OP THE UNITED STATES.

FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS,

THE period for a new election of a citizen, to ad-
iHmister the executive government of the United States,
being not far distant, and the time actually arrived,
when your thoughts must be employed in designating
the person, who is to be clothed with that important
trust, it appears to me proper, especially as it may con
duce to a more distinct expression of the public voice,
that I should now apprize you of the resolution I have
formed, to decline being considered among the num
ber of those, out of whom a choice is to be made.

I beg you, at the same time, to do me the justice to
be assured, that this resolution has not been taken,
without a strict regard to all the considerations ap
pertaining to the relation which binds a dutiful citizen
to his country ; and that, in withdrawing the tender of
service, which silence, in my situation, might imply, I
am influenced by no diminution of zeal for your future
interest ; no deficiency of grateful respect for your past
kindness ; but am supported by a full conviction, that
the step is compatible with both.

The acceptance of, and continuance, hitherto, in the
office to which your suffrages have twice called me,
have been a uniform sacrifice of inclination to the
opinion of duty, and to a deference for what appeared
to be your desire. I constantly hoped, that it would
have been much earlier in my power, consistently with
motives, which I was not at liberty to disregard, to

WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL ADDRESS. Ill

return to that retirement from which I had been re
luctantly drawn. The strength of my inclination to do
this, previous to the last election, had even led to the
preparation of an address, to declare it to you ; but
mature reflection on the then perplexed and critical
posture of our affairs with foreign nations, and the
unanimous advice of persons entitled to my confidence,
impelled me to abandon the idea.

I rejoice, that the state of your concerns, external as
well as internal, no longer renders the pursuit of in
clination incompatible with the sentiment of duty or
propriety : and am persuaded, whatever partiality may
be retained for my services, that in the present circum
stances of our country, you will not disapprove of my
determination to retire.

The impressions, with which I first undertook the
arduous trust, were explained on the proper occasion.
In the discharge of this trust I will only say, that I have
with good intentions contributed towards the organi
zation and administration of the government, the best
exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capa
ble. Not unconscious, in the outset, of the inferiority
of my qualifications, experience, in my own eyes, per
haps still more in the eyes of others, has strengthened
the motives to diffidence of myself; and every day the
increasing weight of years admonishes me more and
more, that the shade of retirement is as necessary to
me as it will be welcome. Satisfied, that if any cir
cumstances have given peculiar value to my services,
they were temporary, I have the consolation to believe,
that while choice and prudence invite me to quit the
political scene, patriotism does not forbid it.

In looking forward to the moment which is intended
to terminate the career of my public life, my feelings
do not permit me to suspend the deep acknowledg
ment of that debt of gratitude which I owe to my belov
ed country, for the many honors it has conferred upon
me ; still more for the steadfast confidence with which
it has supported me ; and for the opportunities I have

112 WASHINGTON'S

thence enjoyed of manifesting my inviolable attach
ment, by services, faithful and persevering, though in
usefulness unequal to my zeal. If benefits have re
sulted to our country from these services, let it always
be remembered to your praise, and as an instructive
example in our annals, that under circumstances in
which the passions, agitated in every direction, were
liable to mislead, amidst appearances sometimes dubi
ous, vicissitudes of fortune often discouraging, in
situations in which not unfrequently want of success
has countenanced the spirit of criticism, the constan
cy of your support was the essential prop of the efforts,
and a guarantee of the plans by which they were ef
fected. Profoundly penetrated with this idea, I shall
carry it with me to my grave, as a strong incitement
to unceasing wishes, that heaven may continue to you
the choicest tokens of its beneficence; that your union
and brotherly affection may be perpetual; that the
free constitution, which is the work of your hands, may
be sacredly maintained; that its administration, in
every department, may be stamped with wisdom and
virtue; that, in fine, the happiness of the people of
these states, under the auspices of liberty, may be
made complete, by so careful a preservation and so
prudent a use of this blessing, as will acquire to them
the glory of recommending it to the applause, the af
fection, and the adoption of every nation which is yet
a stranger to it.

Here, perhaps, I ought to stop. But a solicitude
for your welfare, which cannot end but with my life,
and the apprehension of danger, natural to that solici
tude, urge me, on an occasion like the present, to offer
to your solemn contemplation, and to recommend to
your frequent review, some sentiments, which are the
result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable obser
vation, and which appear to me all-important to the
permanency of your felicity as a people. These will
be offered to you with the more freedom, as you can
only see in them the disinterested warnings of a part-

FAREWELL ADDRESS.
i

ing friend, who can possibly have no personal motive
to bias his counsel. Nor can I forget, as an encour
agement to it, your indulgent reception of my senti
ments on a former and not dissimilar occasion.

Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every liga
ment of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is
necessary to fortify or confirm the attachment.

The unity of government, which constitutes you one
people, is also now dear to you. It is justly so ; for it
is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence,
the support of your tranquillity at home, your peace
abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very
liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to
foresee, that, from different causes and from different
quarters, much pains- will be taken, many artifices em
ployed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of
this truth ; as this is the point in your political for
tress, against which the batteries of internal and ex
ternal enemies will be most constantly and actively,
(though often covertly and insidiously,) directed, it is
of infinite moment, that you should properly estimate
the immense value of your national union, to your col
lective and individual happiness; that you should
cherish a cordial, habitual and immoveable attach
ment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and
speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety
,and prosperity, watching for its preservation with
jealous anxiety ; discountenancing whatever may sug
gest even a suspicion, that it can in any event be aban
doned ; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawn
ing of every attempt to alienate any portion of our
country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties
which now link together the various parts.

For this you have every inducement of sympathy
and interest. Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common
country, that country has a right to concentrate your
affections. The name of American, which belongs to
you in your national capacity, must always exalt the
just pride of patriotism, more than any appellation de-

WASHINGTON'S

rived from local discriminations. With slight shades
of difference, you have the same religion, manners,
habits and political principles. You have, in a com
mon cause, fought and triumphed together ; the inde
pendence and liberty you possess, are the work of joint
councils and joint efforts, of common dangers, suffer
ings and successes.

But these considerations, however powerfully they
address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly out
weighed by those which apply more immediately to
your interest. Here every portion of our country finds
the most commanding motives for carefully guarding
and preserving the union of the whole.

The North, in an unrestrained intercourse with the
South, protected by the equal laws of a common gov
ernment, finds in the productions of the latter, great
additional resources of maritime and commercial en-
terprize, and precious materials of manufacturing in
dustry. The South in the same intercourse, benefiting
by the agency of the North, sees its agriculture grow
and its commerce expand. Turning partly into its
own channels the seamen of the North, it finds its par
ticular navigation invigorated; and while it contri
butes, in different ways, to nourish and increase the
general mass of the national navigation, it looks for
ward to the protection of a maritime strength, to which
itself is unequally adapted. The East, in like inter
course with the West, already finds, and in the progres
sive improvement of interior communications, by land
and water, will more and more find a valuable vent for
the commodities which it brings from abroad, or manu
factures at home. The West derives from the East sup
plies requisite to its growth and comfort ; and what is,
perhaps, of still greater consequence, it must of neces
sity, owe the secure enjoyment of indispensable outlets
for its own productions, to the weight, influence and
the future maritime strength of the Atlantic side of the
union, directed by an indissoluble community of in
terest as one nation. Any other tenure, by which the

FAREWELL ADDRESS. 115

West can hold this essential advantage, whether deriv
ed from its own separate strength, or from an apostate
and unnatural connexion with any foreign power, must
be intrinsically precarious.

While, then, every part of our country thus feels an
immediate and particular interest in union, all the
parties combined cannot fail to find, in the united mass
of means and efforts, greater strength, greater re
source, proportionably greater security from external
danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by
foreign nations; and what is of inestimable value, they
must derive from union an exemption from those broils
and wars between themselves, which so frequently af
flict neighboring countries, not tied together by the
same government, which their own rivalships alone
would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite
foreign alliances, attachments and intrigues, would
stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will
avoid the necessity of those overgrown military es
tablishments, which, under any form of government,
are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regard
ed as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In
this sense it is, that your union ought to be considered
as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of
the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the
other.

These considerations speak a persuasive language
to every reflecting and virtuous mind, and exhibit the
continuance of the union as a primary object of patri
otic desire. Is there a doubt, whether a common gov
ernment can embrace so large a sphere ? Let expe
rience solve it. To listen to mere speculation, in such
a case, were criminal. We are authorized to hope,
that a proper organization of the whole, with the aux
iliary agency of governments for the respective subdi
visions, will afford a happy issue to the experiment.
'Tis well worth a fair and full experiment. With such
powerful and obvious motives to union, affecting all
parts of our country, while experience shall not have

US' WASHINGTON'*

demonstrated its impracticability, there will always be
reason to distrust the patriotism of those, who, in any
quarter, may endeavor to weaken its bands.

In contemplating the causes which may disturb our
union, it occurs, as a matter of serious concern, that
any ground should have been furnished for characteriz
ing parties by geographical discriminations — Northern
and Southern — Atlantic and Western : whence design
ing men may endeavor to excite a belief, that there is
a real difference of local interests and views. One of
the expedients of party to acquire influence, within
particular districts, is to misrepresent the opinions and
aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves
too much against the jealousies and heart-burnings
which spring from these misrepresentations : they tend
to render alien to each other, those who ought to be
bound together by fraternal affection. The inhabi
tants of our western country have lately had a useful
lesson on this head : they have seen, in the negocia-
tion, by the executive, and in the unanimous ratifica
tion, by the senate, of the treaty with Spain, and in the
universal satisfaction of that event, throughout the
United States, a decisive proof how unfounded were
the suspicions, propagated among them, of a policy in
the general government, and in the Atlantic states,
unfriendly to their interests in regard to the Mississip
pi : they have been witnesses to the formation of two
treaties, that with Great Britain and that with Spain,
which secure to them every thing they could de
sire, in respect to our foreign relations, towards con
firming their prosperity. Will it not be their wisdom
to rely, for the preservation of these advantages, on
the union by which they were procured ? Will they
not henceforth be deaf to those advisers, if such there
are, who would sever them from their brethren, and
connect them with aliens ?

To the efficacy and permanency of your union, a
government for the whole is indispensable. No alli
ances, however strict, between the parts, can be an

FAREWELL ADDRESS. 117

adequate substitute ; they must inevitably experience
the infractions and interruptions, which all alliances, in
all times, have experienced. Sensible of this momen
tous truth, you have improved upon your first essay,
by the adoption of a constitution of government, bet
ter calculated than your former, for an intimate union,
and for the efficacious management of your common
concerns. This government, the offspring of our own
choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full
investigation and mature deliberation, completely free
in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, unit
ing security with energy, and containing within itself
a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim
to your confidence and your support. Respect for its
authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in
its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental
maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political
systems is, the right of the people to make and to alter
their constitutions of government. But the constitu
tion, which at any time exists, until changed by an ex
plicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacred
ly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power
and the right of the people to establish a government,
presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the
established government.

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all
combinations and associations, under whatever plau
sible character, with the real design to direct, control,
counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action
of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this
fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They
serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and
extraordinary force, to put in the place of the delegat
ed will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small,
but artful and enterprizing minority of the community;
and according to the alternate triumphs of different
parties, to make the public administration the mirror
of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of fac
tion, rather than the organ of consistent and whole-

VOL. v. 16

WASHINGTON'S

some plans, digested by common councils, and modilied
by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above
description may now and then answer popular ends,
they are likely, in the course of time and things, to be
come potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious
and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the
power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the
reins of government ; destroying afterwards the very
engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

Towards the preservation of your government, and
the permanency of your present happy state, it is re
quisite, not only that you speedily discountenance irre
gular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but
also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation
upon its principles, however specious the pretexts.
One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms
of the constitution, alterations which will impair the
energy of the system; and thus to undermine what
cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to
which you may be invited, remember that time and ha
bit are at least as necessary to fix the true character
of governments, as of other human institutions; that
experience is the surest standard, by which to test the
real tendency of the existing constitution of a country ;
that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hy
pothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change,
from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion.
And remember, especially, that for the efficient man
agement of your common interests, in a country so ex
tensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is
consistent with the perfect security of liberty, is indis
pensable. Liberty itself will find in such a govern
ment, with powers properly distributed und adjusted,
its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a
name, where the government is too feeble to withstand
the enterprizes of faction ; to confine each member of
the society within the limits prescribed by the laws,
and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoy
ment of the rights of person and property.

FAREWELL ADDRESS. 119

1 have already intimated to you the danger of
parties in the state, with particular reference to the
founding of them on geographical discriminations.
Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn
you, in the most solemn manner, against the baneful
effects of the spirit of party, generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our
nature, having its root in the strongest passions of
the human mind. It exists under different shapes, in
all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or re
pressed. But in those of the popular form, it is seen
in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst
enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over an
other, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to
party dissension, which, in different ages and coun
tries, has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is
itself a frightful despotism. But this leads, at length,
to a more formal and permanent despotism. The
disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline
the minds of men to seek security and repose in the
absolute power of an individual ; and sooner or later,
the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more
fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition
to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of
public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this
kind, (which, nevertheless, ought not to be out of
sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the
spirit of party, are sufficient to make it the inter
est and duty of a wise people, to discourage and re
strain it.

It serves always to distract the public councils, and
enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the
community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms;
kindles the animosity of one part against another ; fo
ments-, occasionally, riot and insurrection. It opens
the door to foreign influence and corruption, which
find a facilitated access to the government itself

]20 WASHINGTON'S

through the channels of party passions. Thus the
policy and the will of one country are subjected to the
policy and will of another.

There is an opinion, that parties, in free countries,
are useful checks upon the administration of the gov
ernment and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty.
This, within certain limits, is probably true ; and, in
governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may
look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit
of party. But in those of the popular character, in
governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be en
couraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain
there will always be enough of that spirit for every
salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of
excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opin
ion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be
quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent
its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it
should consume.

It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking,
in a free country, should inspire caution in those en
trusted with its administration, to confine themselves
within their respective constitutional spheres, avoid
ing, in the exercise of the powers of one department,
to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroach
ment tends to consolidate the powers of all the de
partments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form
of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of
that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which
predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satis
fy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of
reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by
dividing and distributing it into different depositaries,
and constituting each the guardian of the public weal
against invasion by the others, has been evinced by
experiments ancient and modern: some of them in
our country, and under our own eyes. To preserve
them, must be as necessary, as to institute them. If,
in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modi-

FAREWELL ADDRESS. 121

fication of the constitutional powers, be, in any particu
lar, wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the
way which the constitution designates. But let there
be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one
instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the cus
tomary weapon by which free governments are de
stroyed. The precedent must always greatly over
balance, in permanent evil, any partial or transient
benefit which the use can at any time yield.

Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to poli
tical prosperity, religion and morality are indispensa
ble supports. In vain would that man claim the tri
bute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these
great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of
the destinies of men and citizens. The mere politician,
equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to
cherish them. A volume could not trace all their con
nexions with private and public felicity. Let it simply
be asked, where is the security for property, for repu
tation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert
the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in
courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge
the supposition, that morality can be maintained with
out religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influ
ence of refined education on minds of peculiar struc
ture ; reason and experience both forbid us to expect,
that national morality can prevail in exclusion of reli
gious principles.

It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a
necessary spring of popular government. The rule,
indeed, extends with more or less force to every species
of free government. Who, that is a sincere friend to it,
can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the
foundation of the fabric ?

Promote, then, as an object of primary importance,
institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In
proportion as the structure of a government gives force
to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion
should be enlightened.

122 WASHINGTON'S

As a very important source of strength and security,
cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is
to use it as sparingly as possible ; avoiding occasions
of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also
that timely disbursements to prepare for danger, fre
quently prevent much greater disbursements to repel
it; avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not
only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous
exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts which
unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungener
ously throwing upon posterity the burden which we
ourselves ought to bear. The execution of these max
ims belongs to your representatives, but it is necessary
that public opinion should co-operate. To facilitate
to them the performance of their duty, it is essential
that you should practically bear in mind, that towards
the payment of debts there must be revenue ; that to
have revenue there must be taxes ; that no taxes can
be devised which are not more or less inconvenient
and unpleasant ; that the intrinsic embarrassment, in
separable from the selection of the proper objects,
(which is always the choice of difficulties,) ought to be
a decisive motive for a candid construction of the con
duct of the government in making it, and for a spirit
of acquiescence in the measures for obtaining reve
nue which the public exigencies may at any time
dictate.

Observe good faith and justice towards all nations ;
cultivate peace and harmony with all : religion and
morality enjoin this conduct ; and can it be that good
policy does not equally enjoin it ? It will be worthy of
a free, enlightened and, at no distant period, a great
nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too
novel example of a people always guided by an exalted
justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the
course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would
richly repay any temporary advantages which might be
lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it be, that
Providence has not connected the permanent felicity

FAREWELL ADDKESS. 123

of a nation with its virtue ? The experiment, at least.
is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles
human nature. Alas ! is it rendered impossible by its

vices ?

In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more es
sential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies
against particular nations, and passionate attachments
for others, should be excluded ; and that in place of
them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be
cultivated. The nation, which indulges towards an
other an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is
in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its ani
mosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to
lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy
in one nation against another, disposes each more
readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight
causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intracta
ble, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute
occur.

Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed and
bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill will and
resentment, sometimes impels to war the government,
contrary to the best calculations of policy. The gov
ernment sometimes participates in the national pro
pensity, and adopts through passion what reason would
reject; at other times, it makes the animosity of the
nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by
pride, ambition and other sinister and pernicious mo
tives. The peace often, and sometimes, perhaps, the>
liberty of nations has been the victim.

So, likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation
for another, produces a variety of evils. Sympathy
for the favorite nation facilitating the illusion of an
imaginary common interest in cases where no real com
mon interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities
of the other, betrays the former into a participation in
the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate
inducement or justification. It leads also to conces
sions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to

124 WASHINGTON'S

others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making
the concessions ; by unnecessarily parting with what
ought to have been retained ; and by exciting jealousy,
ill will and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties
from whom equal privileges are withheld ; and it gives
to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens, (who de
vote themselves to the favorite nation,) facility to be
tray, or sacrifice the interests of their own country, with
out odium, sometimes even with popularity ; gilding,
with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation,
a commendable deference for public opinion, or lauda
ble zeal for public good, the base or foolish compli
ances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

As avenues to foreign influence, in innumerable
ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to
the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How
many opportunities do they afford to tamper with do
mestic factions ; to practise the arts of seduction ; to
mislead public opinion ; to influence or awe the pub
lic councils ! Such an attachment of a small or weak,
towards a great and powerful nation, dooms the former
to be the satellite of the latter.

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, (1
conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens,) the jealousy
of a free people ought to be constantly awake ; since
history and experience prove, that foreign influence is
one of the most baneful foes of republican government.
But that jealousy, to be useful, must be impartial;
else it becomes the instrument of the very influence
to be avoided, instead of a defence against it. Exces
sive partiality for one foreign nation, and excessive dis
like of another, cause those whom they actuate, to
see danger only on one side; and serve to veil and
even second the arts of influence on the other. Real
patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite,
are liable to become suspected and odious ; while its
tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of
the people, to surrender their interests.

The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to for-

FAREWELL ADDRESS.

eign nations is, in extending our commercial relations,
to have with them as little political connexion as pos
sible. So far as we have already formed engage
ments, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith.
Here let us stop.

Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us
have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must
be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of
which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence,
therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate our
selves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of
her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions
of her friendships or enmities.

Our detached and distant situation invites and ena
bles us to pursue a different course. If we remain
one people, under an efficient government, the period
is not far off, when we may defy material injury from
external annoyance ; when we may take such an at
titude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time
resolve upon, to be scrupulously respected ; when bel
ligerent nations, under the impossibility of making ac
quisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving
us provocation ; when we may choose peace or war,
as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situa
tion? Why quit our own, to stand upon foreign
ground ? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that
of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and pros
perity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, in
terest, humor, or caprice ?

'Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alli
ances with any portion of the foreign world ; so far, I
mean, as we are now at liberty to do it ; for let me not
be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to
existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less ap
plicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty
is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let
those engagements be observed in their genuine sense,

VOL v. 1 7

126 WASHINGTON'S

But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary, and would ' u
unwise, to extend them.

Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable
establishments, in a respectable defensive posture, we
may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordina
ry emergencies.

Harmony, and a liberal intercourse with all nations,
are recommended by policy, humanity and interest.
But even our commercial policy should hold an equal
and impartial hand ; neither seeking nor granting ex
clusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural
course of things ; diffusing and diversifying, by gentle
means, the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing ;
establishing, with powers so disposed, in order to
give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our
merchants, and to enable the government to support
them, conventional rules of intercourse, the best that
present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit,
but temporary, and liable to be, from time to time,
abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances
shall dictate ; constantly keeping in view, that it is
folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from
another ; that it must pay, with a portion of its inde
pendence, for whatever it may accept under that
character ; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself
in the condition of having given equivalents for nomi
nal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingrati
tude for not giving more. There can be no greater
error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from
nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience
must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels
of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they
will make the strong and lasting impression I could
wish ; that they will control the usual current of the
passions, or prevent our nation from running the
course which has hitherto marked the destiny of na
tions! But, if I may even flatter myself, that they
may be productive of some partial benefit, some oc-

FAREWELL ADDRESS.

**

casional good ; that they may now and then recur to
moderate the fury of party spirit; to warn against the
mischiefs of foreign intrigues; to guard against the
impostures of pretended patriotism ; this hope will be
a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare,
by which they have been dictated.

How far, in the discharge of my official duties, I
have been guided by the principles which have been
delineated, the public records and other evidences of
my conduct must witness to you and to the world.
To myself, the assurance of my own conscience is.
that 1 have, at least, believed myself to be guided by
them.

In relation to the still subsisting war in Europe, my
proclamation of the 22d of April, 1793. is the index to
my plan. Sanctioned by your approving voice, and
by that of your representatives in both Houses of Con
gress, the spirit of that measure has continually gov
erned me, uninfluenced by any attempts to deter or di
vert me from it.

After deliberate examination, with the aid of the
best lights I could obtain, I was well satisfied, that
our country, under all the circumstances of the case,
had a right to take, and was bound in duty and inter
est to take, a neutral position. Having taken it, I de
termined, as far as should depend upon me, to maintain
it with moderation, perseverance and firmness.

The considerations, which respect the right to hold
this conduct, it is not necessary, on this occasion, to
detail. I will only observe, that, according to my un
derstanding of the matter, that right, so far from being
denied by any of the belligerent powers, has been vir
tually admitted by all.

The duty of holding a neutral conduct may be in
ferred, without any thing more, from the obligation
which justice and humanity impose on every nation, in
cases in which it is free to act, to maintain inviolate
the relations of peace and amity towards other nations.

The inducements of interest for observing that con-

128 WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL ADDRESS.

duct, will best be referred to your own reflection and
experience. With me, a predominant motive has
been, to endeavor to gain time to our country to settle
and mature its yet recent institutions, and to progress,
without interruption, to that degree of strength and
consistency, which is necessary to give it, humanly
speaking, the command of its own fortunes.

Though, in reviewing the incidents of my adminis
tration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am,
nevertheless, too sensible of my defects, not to think it
probable, that I may have committed many errors.
Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Al
mighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they
may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope, that
my country will never cease to view them with indul
gence ; arid that, after forty-five years of my life dedi
cated to its service, with an upright zeal, the faults of
incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as
myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.

Relying on its kindness in this, as in other things,
and actuated by that fervent love towards it, which is
so natural to a man, who views in it the native soil of
himself and his progenitors for several generations, I
anticipate, with pleasing expectation, that retreat, in
which 1 promise myself to realize, without alloy, the
sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fel
low-citizens, the benign influence of good laws under
a free government — the ever favorite object of my
heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual
cares, labors and dangers.

EULOGY ON WASHINGTON,

DELIVERED AT THE REQUEST OF CONGRESS,

BY HENRY LEE,

MEMBER OP CONGRESS FROM VIRGINIA-

IN obedience to your will, I rise your humble organ,
with the hope of executing a part of the system of pub
lic mourning which you have been pleased to adopt,
commemorative of the death of the most illustrious
and most beloved personage this country has ever
produced ; and which, while it transmits to posterity
your sense of the awful event, faintly represents your
knowledge of the consummate excellence you so cor
dially honor.

Desperate, indeed, is any attempt on earth to meet
correspondency this dispensation of heaven; for,
while with pious resignation we submit to the will of
an all-gracious Providence, we can never cease la
menting, in our finite view of omnipotent wisdom, the
heart-rending privation for which our nation weeps.
When the civilized world shakes to its centre ; when
every moment gives birth to strange and momentous
changes ; when our peaceful quarter of the globe, ex
empt as it happily has been from any share in the
slaughter of the human race, may yet be compelled to
abandon her pacific policy, and to risk the doleful
casualties of war : what limit is there to the extent
of our loss ? None within the reach of my words to
express ; none which your feelings will not disavow.

The founder of our federate republic — our bulwark

130 MR. LEE'S EULOGY

in war, our guide in peace, is no more ! Oh that this
were but questionable ! Hope, the comforter of the
wretched, would pour into our agonizing hearts its
balmy dew. But, alas ! there is no hope for us ; our
WASHINGTON is removed forever ! Possessing the
stoutest frame, and purest mind, he had passed nearly
to his sixty-eighth year, in the enjoyment of high health,
when, habituated by his care of us to neglect himself,
a slight cold, disregarded, became inconvenient on
Friday, oppressive on Saturday, and, defying every
medical interposition, before the morning of Sunday,
put an end to the best of men. An end did I say ? —
his fame survives ! bounded only by the limits of the
earth, and by the extent of the human mind. He survives
in our hearts, in. the growing knowledge of our chil
dren, in the affection of the good throughout the
world ; and when our monuments shall be done away ;
when nations now existing shall be no more ; when
even our young and far-spreading empire shall have
perished, still will our WASHINGTON'S glory unfaded
shine, and die not, until love of virtue cease on earth,
or earth itself sinks into chaos.

How, my fellow-citizens, shall I single to your grate
ful hearts his pre-eminent worth ! Where shall I begin
in opening to your view a character throughout sub
lime ? Shall I speak of his warlike achievements, all
springing from obedience to his country's will — all di
rected to his country's good ?

Will you go with me to the banks of the Monon-
gahela, to see your youthful WASHINGTON, supporting,
in the dismal hour of Indian victory, the ill-fated Brad-
dock, and saving, by his judgment and by his valor,
the remains of a defeated army, pressed by the con
quering savage foe ; or, when oppressed America,
nobly resolving to risk her all in defence of her vio
lated rights, he was elevated by the unanimous voice
of Congress to the command of her armies ? Will you
follow him to the high grounds of Boston, where to an
undisciplined, courageous and virtuous yeomanry, his

ON WASHINGTON. 131

presence gave the stability of system, and infused the
invincibility of love of country ; or shall I carry you to
the painful scenes of Long Island, York Island and
New Jersey, when, combatting superior and gallant
armies, aided by powerful fleets, and led by chiefs high
in the roll of fame, he stood, the bulwark of our safety,
undismayed by disaster, unchanged by change of for
tune ? Or will you view him in the precarious fields
of Trenton, where deep gloom, unnerving every arm,
reigned triumphant through our thinned, worn down,
unaided ranks ; himself unmoved ? Dreadful was the
night. It was about this time of winter, the storm
raged, the Delaware rolling furiously with floating ice,
forbade the approach of man. WASHINGTON, self-col
lected, viewed the tremendous scene ; his country call
ed ; unappalled by surrounding dangers, he passed to
the hostile shore; he fought; he conquered. The
morning sun cheered the American world. Our coun
try rose on the event; and her dauntless chief, pursu
ing his blow, completed, in the lawns of Princeton,
what his vast soul had conceived on the shores of
Delaware.

Thence to the strong grounds of Morristown, he
led his small but gallant band ; and through an event
ful winter, by the high efforts of his genius, whose
matchless force was measurable only by the growth
of difficulties, he held in check formidable hostile le
gions, conducted by a chief, experienced in the art of
war, and famed for his valor on the ever memorable
heights of Abraham, where fell Wolfe, Montcalm
and since our much lamented Montgomery, all cover
ed with glory. In this fortunate interval, produced by
his masterly conduct, our fathers, ourselves, animated
by his resistless example, rallied around our country's
standard, and continued to follow her beloved chief
through the various and trying scenes to which the
destinies of our union led.

Who is there that has forgotten the vales of Brari-
dywine, the fields of Germantown, or the plains of

132 MR. LEE'S EULOGY

Monmouth ? Everywhere present, wants of every
kind obstructing, numerous and valiant armies en
countering, himself a host, he assuaged our sufferings,
limited our privations, and upheld our tottering re
public. Shall I display to you the spread of the fire of his
soul, by rehearsing the praises of the hero of Sarato
ga, and his much loved compeer of the Carolinas ?
No ; our WASHINGTON wears not borrowed glory. To
Gates — to Greene, he gave without reserve the ap
plause due to their eminent merit ; and long may the
chiefs of Saratoga, and of Eutaws, receive the grate
ful respect of a grateful people.

Moving in his own orbit, he imparted heat and light
to his most distant satellites ; and combining the phy
sical and moral force of all within his sphere, with irre
sistible, weight he took his course, commiserating fol
ly, disdaining vice, dismaying treason, and invigorating
despondency ; until the auspicious hour arrived, when,
united with the intrepid forces of a potent and magnani
mous ally, he brought to submission the since conquer-
er of India; thus finishing his long career of military
glory with a lustre corresponding to his great name,
and in this, his last act of war, affixing the seal of fate
to our nation's birth.

To the horrid din of battle, sweet peace succeeded ;
and our virtuous Chief, mindful only of the common
good, in a moment tempting personal aggrandizement,
hushed the discontents of growing sedition ; and sur
rendering his power into the hands from which he had
received it, converted his sword into a ploughshare,
teaching an admiring world that to be truly great, you
must be truly good.

Was I to stop here, the picture would be incom
plete, and the task imposed unfinished. Great as was
our WASHINGTON in war, and as much as did that great
ness contribute to produce the American Republic, it
is not in war alone his pre-eminence stands conspicu
ous. His various talents, combining all the capacities
of a statesman, with those of a soldier, fitted him alike

ON WASHINGTON. 133

to guide the councils and the armies of our nation.
Scarcely had he rested from his martial toils, while his
invaluable parental advice was still sounding in our
ears, when he, who had been our shield and our sword,
was called forth to act a less splendid, but more im
portant part.

Possessing a clear and penetrating mind, a strong
and sound judgment, calmness and temper for delibe
ration, with invincible firmness and perseverance in
resolutions maturely formed ; drawing information from
all ; acting from himself, with incorruptible integrity
and unvarying patriotism ; his own superiority and the
public confidence alike marked him as the man design
ed by heaven to lead in the great political as well as
military events which have distinguished the era of
his life.

The finger of an overruling Providence, pointing at
WASHINGTON, was neither mistaken nor unobserved ;
when, to realize the vast hopes to which our revolu
tion had given birth, a change of political system be
came indispensable.

How novel, how grand the spectacle ! Independent
states, stretched over an immense territory, and known
only by common difficulty, clinging to their union as
the rock of their safety, deciding by frank comparison
of their relative condition, to rear on that rock, under
the guidance of reason, a common government through
whose commanding protection, liberty and order, with
their long train of blessings, should be safe to them
selves, and the sure inheritance of their posterity.

This arduous task devolved on citizens selected by
the people, from knowledge of their wisdom and confi
dence in their virtue. In this august assembly of sages
and of patriots, WASHINGTON of course was found;
and as if acknowledged to be most wise, where all
were wise, with one voice he was declared their chief.
How well he merited this rare distinction, how faith
ful were the labors of himself and his compatriots, the

VOL. v. 18

134 -MR. LEE'S EULOGY

work of their hands and our union, strength and pros
perity, the fruits of that work, best attest.

But to have essentially aided in presenting to his
country this consummation of her hopes, neither sa
tisfied the claims of his fellow-citizens on his talents,
nor those duties which the possession of those talents
imposed. Heaven had not infused into his mind such
an uncommon share of its ethereal spirit to remain un
employed ; nor bestowed on him his genius unaccom
panied with the corresponding duty of devoting it to
the common good. To have framed a constitution,
was showing only, without realizing, the general hap
piness. This great work remained to be done ; and
America, steadfast in her preference, with one voice
summoned her beloved WASHINGTON, unpractised as
he was in the duties of civil administration, to execute
this last act in the completion of the national felicity.
Obedient to her call, he assumed the high office with
that self-distrust peculiar to his innate modesty, the
constant attendant of pre-eminent virtue. What was
the burst of joy through our anxious land, on this ex
hilarating event, is known to us all. The aged, the
young, the brave, the fair, rivalled each other in de
monstrations of their gratitude ; and this high- wrought,
delightful scene, was heightened in its effect, by the
singular contest between the zeal of the bestowers and
the avoidance of the receiver of the honors bestowed.
Commencing his administration, what heart is not
charmed with the recollection of the pure and wise
principles announced by himself, as the basis of his
political life! He best understood the indissoluble
union between virtue and happiness, between duty and
advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest
and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of pub
lic prosperity and individual felicity; watching, with
an equal and comprehensive eye, over this great as
semblage of communities and interests, he laid the
foundations of our national policy in the unerring, im
mutable principles of morality, based on religion, ex-

ON WASHINGTON. 135

amplifying the pre-eminence of a free government, by
all the attributes which win the affections of its citi
zens, or command the respect of the world.

" O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint I"

Leading through the complicated difficulties pro
duced by previous obligations and conflicting interests,
seconded by succeeding Houses of Congress, enlight
ened and patriotic, he surmounted all original obstruc
tion, and brightened the path of our national felicity.

The presidential term expiring, his solicitude to ex
change exaltation for humility, returned with a force
increased with increase of age; and he had prepared
his farewell address to his countrymen, proclaiming his
intention, when the united interposition of all around
him, enforced by the eventful prospects of the epoch,
produced a further sacrifice of inclination to duty.
The election of President followed, and WASHINGTON,
by the unanimous vote of the nation, was called to re
sume the chief magistracy. What a wonderful fixture
of confidence ! Which attracts most our admiration,
a people so correct, or a citizen combining an assem
blage of talents forbidding rivalry, and stifling even
envy itself? Such a nation ought to be happy, such
a chief must be forever revered.

War, long menaced by the Indian tribes, now broke
out ; and the terrible conflict, deluging Europe with
blood, began to shed its baneful influence over our
happy land. To the first, outstretching his invincible
arm, under the orders of the gallant Wayne, the Ame
rican Eagle soared triumphant through distant forests.
Peace followed victory ; and the melioration of the
condition of the enemy, followed peace. Godlike vir
tue, which uplifts even the subdued savage !

To the second he opposed himself. New and deli
cate was the conjuncture, and great was the stake.
Soon did his penetrating mind discern and seize the
only course, continuing to us ah1 the felicity enjoyed.
He issued his proclamation of neutrality. This index

MR. LEE'S EULOGY

to his whole subsequent conduct, was sanctioned by
the approbation of both Houses of Congress, and by
the approving voice of the people.

To this sublime policy he inviolably adhered, un
moved by foreign intrusion, unshaken by domestic
turbulence.

u Justum et tenacem propositi virum,
Non civium ardor prava jubentium,
Non vultus instantis tyranni,
Mente quatit solida."

Maintaining his pacific system at the expense of no
duty, America, faithful to herself, and unstained in her
honor, continued to enjoy the delights of peace, while
afflicted Europe mourns in every quarter, under the
accumulated miseries of an unexampled war; mise
ries in which our happy country must have shared,
had not our pre-eminent WASHINGTON been as firm in
council as he was brave in the field.

Pursuing steadfastly his course, he held safe the pub
lic happiness, preventing foreign war, and quelling in
ternal discord, till the revolving period of a third elec
tion approached, when he executed his interrupted but
inextinguishable desire of returning to the humble
walks of private life.

The promulgation of his fixed resolution, stopped
the anxious wishes of an affectionate people from add
ing a third unanimous testimonial of their unabated
confidence in the man so long enthroned in their hearts.
When before was affection like this exhibited on
earth? Turn over the records of ancient Greece;
review the annals of mighty Rome ; examine the vo
lumes of modern Europe; you search in vain. Ame
rica and her WASHINGTON only afford the dignified ex
emplification.

The illustrious personage, called by the national
voice in succession to the arduous office of guiding a
free people, had new difficulties to encounter. The
amicable effort of settling our difficulties with France,

ON WASHINGTON. 137

begun by WASHINGTON, and pursued by his successor in
virtue as in station, proving abortive, America took
measures of self-defence. No sooner was the public
mind roused by a prospect of danger, than every eye
was turned to the friend of all, though secluded from
public view, and gray in public service. The virtuous
veteran, following his plough, received the unexpected
summons with mingled emotions of indignation at the
unmerited ill-treatment of his country, and of a deter
mination once more to risk his all in her defence.

The annunciation of these feelings, in his affecting
letter to the President, accepting the command of the
army, concludes his official conduct.

First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of
his countrymen, he was second to none in the humble
and endearing scenes of private life. Pious, just, hu
mane, temperate and sincere ; uniform, dignified and
commanding, his example was as edifying to all around
him as were the effects of that example lasting.

To his equals he was condescending ; to his infe
riors kind; and to the dear object of his. affections
exemplarily tender. Correct throughout, vice shud
dered in his presence, and virtue always felt his foster
ing hand ; the purity of his private character gave ef
fulgence to his public virtues.

His last scene comported with the whole tenor of
his life : although in extreme pain, not a sigh, not a
groan escaped him ; and with undisturbed serenity he
closed his wellspent life. Such was the man America
has lost ! Such was the man for whom our nation

mourns!

Methinks I see his august image, and hear, falling
from his venerable lips, these deep sinking words :

" Cease, sons of America, lamenting our separation:
go on, and confirm by your wisdom the fruits of our
joint counsels, joint efforts and common dangers. Re
verence religion ; diffuse knowledge throughout your
land ; patronize the arts and sciences ; let liberty and
order be inseparable companions ; control party spirit.

138 MR- LEE>S EULOGY, &c.

the bane of free government ; observe good faith to.
and cultivate peace with all nations ; shut up every
avenue to foreign influence ; contract rather than ex
tend national connexion ; rely on yourselves only : be
American in thought and deed. Thus will you give
immortality to that union, which was the constant ob
ject of my terrestrial labors. Thus will you preserve,
undisturbed to the latest posterity, the felicity of a peo
ple to me most dear : and thus will you supply, (if my
happiness is now aught to you,) the only vacancy in
the round of pure bliss high heaven bestows."

EULOGY ON WASHINGTON,

DELIVERED AT THE REQUEST OF THE LEGISLATURE OF
MASSACHUSETTS, FEBRUARY 8, 1800.

BY FISHER AMES.

IT is natural that the gratitude of mankind should be
drawn to their benefactors. A number of these have
successively arisen, who were no less distinguished
for the elevation of their virtues, than the lustre of
their talents. Of those, however, who were born, and
who acted, through life, as if they were born, not for
themselves, but for their country and the whole human
race, how few, alas ! are recorded in the long annals
of ages, and how wide the intervals of time and space
that divide them. In all this dreary length of way,
they appear like five or six lighthouses on as many
thousand miles of coast; they gleam upon the sur
rounding darkness, with an inextinguishable splendor,
like stars seen through a mist ; but they are seen like
stars, to cheer, to guide, and to save. WASHINGTON is
now added to that small number. Already he attracts
curiosity, like a newly discovered star, whose benignant
light will travel on to the world's and time's farthest
bounds. Already his name is hung up by history as
conspicuously, as if it sparkled in one of the constella
tions of the sky.

By commemorating his death, we are called this day
to yield the homage that is due to virtue ; to confess
the common debt of mankind as well as our own;
and to pronounce for posterity, now dumb, that eulogi-
um, which they will delight to echo ten ages hence,
when we are dumb.

I consider myself not merely in the midst of the citi
zens of this town, or even of the state. In idea, I gather

140 MR. AMES' EULOGY

round me the nation. In the vast and venerable con
gregation of the patriots of all countries and of all
enlightened men, I would, if I could, raise my voice,
and speak to mankind in a strain worthy of my audi
ence, and as elevated as my subject. But how shall I
express emotions that are condemned to be mute,
because they are unutterable ? I felt, and I was wit
ness, on the day when the news of his death reached
us, to the throes of that grief that saddened every
countenance, and wrung drops of agony from the
heart. Sorrow labored for utterance, but found none.
Every man looked round for the consolation of other
men's tears. Gracious Heaven ! what consolation !
Each face was convulsed with sorrow for the past :
every heart shivered with despair for the future. The
man who, and who alone, united all hearts, was dead
— dead, at the moment when his power to do good
was the greatest, and when the aspect of the imminent
public dangers seemed more than ever to render his
aid indispensable, and his loss irreparable : irrepara
ble ; for two WASHINGTONS come not in one age.

A grief so thoughtful, so profound, so mingled with
tenderness and admiration, so interwoven with our
national self-love, so often revived by being diffused, is
not to be expressed. You have assigned me a task
that is impossible.

O if I could perform it, if I could illustrate his princi
ples in my discourse as he displayed them in his life,
if I could paint his virtues as he practised them, if I
could convert the fervid enthusiasm of my heart into
the talent to transmit his fame, as it ought to pass, to
posterity, I should be the successful organ of your will,
the minister of his virtues, and may I dare to say, the
humble partaker of his immortal glory. These are
ambitious, deceiving hopes, and I reject them ; for it is,
perhaps, almost as difficult, at once with judgment
and feeling, to praise great actions, as to perform
them. A lavish and undistinguishing eulogium is not
praise; and to discriminate such excellent qualities

ON WASHINGTON, 141

as were characteristic and peculiar to him, would be
to raise a name, as he raised it, above envy, above
parallel, perhaps, for that very reason, above emula
tion.

Such a portraying of character, however, must be
addressed to the understanding, and, therefore, even if
it were well executed, would seem to be rather an analy
sis of moral principles, than the recital of a hero's ex^
ploits.

With whatever fidelity I might execute this task, I
know that some would prefer a picture drawn to the
imagination. They would have our WASHINGTON rep
resented of a giant's size, and in the character of a hero
of romance. They, who love to wonder better than to
reason, would not be satisfied with the contemplation
of a great example, unless, in the exhibition, it should
be so distorted into prodigy, as to be both incredible
and useless. Others, I hope but few, who think mean
ly of human nature, will deem it incredible, that even
WASHINGTON should think with as much dignity and
elevation as he acted ; and they will grovel in vain in
the search for mean and selfish motives, that could
incite and sustain him to devote his life to his country.

Do not these suggestions sound in your ears like a
profanation of virtue — and, while I pronounce them,
do you not feel a thrill of indignation at your hearts ?
Forbear. Time never fails to bring every exalted re
putation to a strict scrutiny ; the world, in passing the
judgment that is never to be reversed, will deny all
partiality even to the name of WASHINGTON. Let it be
denied, for its justice will confer glory.

Such a life as WASHINGTON'S cannot derive honor
from the circumstances of birth and education, though
it throws back a lustre upon both. With an inquisi
tive mind, that always profited by the lights of others,
and was unclouded by passions of its own, he acquired
a maturity of judgment, rare in age, unparalleled in
youth. Perhaps no young man had so early laid up a
life's stock of materials for solid reflection, or settled

VOL. v, 19

142 MR. AMES' EULOGY

so soon the principles and habits of his conduct. Gray
experience listened to his counsels with respect, and.
at a time when youth is almost privileged to be rash,
Virginia committed the safety of her frontier, and, ulti
mately, the safety of America, not merely to his valor,
for that would be scarcely praise, but to his prudence.

It is not in Indian wars that heroes are celebrated ;
but it is there they are formed. No enemy can be
more formidable, by the craft of his ambushes, the sud
denness of his onset, or the ferocity of his vengeance.
The soul of WASHINGTON was thus exercised to dan
ger ; and, on the first trial, as on every other, it ap
peared firm in adversity, cool in action, undaunted,
self-possessed. His spirit, and still more his prudence,
on the occasion of Braddock's defeat, diffused his
name throughout America, and across the Atlantic.
Even then his country viewed him with complacency,
as her most hopeful son.

At the peace of 1763, Great Britain, in consequence
of her victories, stood in a position to prescribe her
own terms. She chose, perhaps, better for us than for
herself: for by expelling the French from Canada, we
no longer feared hostile neighbors ; and we soon found
just cause to be afraid of our protectors. We dis
cerned, even then, a truth, which the conduct of
France has since so strongly confirmed, that there is
nothing which the gratitude of weak states can give,
that will satisfy strong allies for their aid, but authori
ty : nations that want protectors, will have masters.
Our settlements, no longer checked by enemies on the
frontier, rapidly increased ; and it was discovered, that
America was growing to a size that could defend itself!

In this, perhaps unforeseen, but at length obvious
state of things, the British government conceived a
jealousy of the colonies, of which, and of their intend
ed measures of precaution, they made no secret.

Our nation, like its great leader, had only to take
counsel from its courage. When WASHINGTON heard
the voice of his country in distress, his obedience was

ON WASHINGTON, J4;i

prompt; and though his sacrifices were great, they
cost him no effort. Neither the object, nor the limits
of my plan, permit me to dilate on the military events
of the revolutionary war. Our history is but a tran
script of his claims on our gratitude : our hearts bear
testimony, that they are claims not to be satisfied.
When overmatched by numbers, a fugitive with a little
band of faithful soldiers, the states as much exhausted
as dismayed, he explored his own undaunted heart, and
found there resources to retrieve our affairs. We
have seen him display as much valor as gives fame to
heroes, and as consummate prudence as ensures suc
cess to valor ; fearless of dangers that were personal to
him ; hesitating and cautious, when they affected his
country ; preferring fame before safety or repose, and
duty before fame.

Rome did not owe more to Fabius, than America to
WASHINGTON. Our nation shares with him the singular
glory of having conducted a civil war with mildness,
and a revolution with order.

The event of that war seemed to crown the felicity
and glory both of America and its chief. Until that
contest, a great part of the civilized world had been
surprisingly ignorant of the force and character, and
almost of the existence of the British colonies. They
had not retained what they knew, nor felt curiosity to
know the state of thirteen wretched settlements, which
vast woods enclosed, and still vaster woods divided from
each other. They did not view the colonists so much
a people, as a race of fugitives, whom want, and soli
tude and intermixture with the savages, had made bar
barians.

At this time, while Great Britain wielded a force
truly formidable to the most powerful states, suddenly,
astonished Europe beheld a feeble people, till then un
known, stand forth, and defy this giant to the combat.
It was so unequal, all expected it would be short.
Our final success exalted their admiration to its high
est point: they allowed to WASHINGTON all that is due

144 UR- AMES' EULOGY

to transcendent virtue, and to the Americans more
than is due to human nature. They considered us a
race of WASHINGTONS, and admitted that nature in
America was fruitful only in prodigies. Their books
and their travellers, exaggerating and distorting all
their representations, assisted to establish the opinion
that this is a new world, with a new order of men and
things adapted to it ; that here we practise industry,
amidst the abundance that requires none ; that we
have morals so refined, that we do not need laws ; and
though we have them, yet we ought to consider their
execution as an insult and a wrong ; that we have vir
tue without weaknesses, sentiment without passions,
and liberty without factions. These illusions, in spite
of their absurdity, and perhaps because they are ab
surd enough to have dominion over the imagination
only, have been received by many of the malecontents
against the governments of Europe, and induced them
to emigrate. Such illusions are too soothing to va
nity to be entirely checked in their currency among
Americans.

They have been pernicious, as they cherish false
ideas of the rights of men and the duties of rulers.
They have led the citizens to look for liberty, where
it is not ; and to consider the government, which is its
castle, as its prison.

WASHINGTON retired to Mount Vernon, and the eyes
of the world followed him. He left his countrymen to
their simplicity and their passions, and their glory soon
departed. Europe began to be undeceived, and it
seemed for a time, as if, by the acquisition of independ
ence, our citizens were disappointed. The confede
ration was then the only compact made " to form a
perfect union of the states, to establish justice, to en
sure the tranquillity, and provide for the security of
the nation ;" and accordingly, union was a name that
still commanded reverence, though not obedience.
The system called justice was, in some of the states,
iniquity reduced to elementary principles; and the

ON WASHINGTON. 143

public tranquillity was such a portentous calm, as
rings in deep caverns before the explosion of an earth
quake. Most of the states then were in fact, though
not in form, unbalanced democracies. Reason, it is
true, spoke audibly in their constitutions; passion and
prejudice louder in their laws. It is to the honor of
Massachusetts, that it is chargeable with little devia
tion from principles : its adherence to them was one
of the causes of a dangerous rebellion. It was scarce
ly possible that such governments should not be agi
tated by parties, and that prevailing parties should not
be vindictive and unjust. Accordingly, in some of
the states, creditors were treated as outlaws ; bank
rupts were armed with legal authority to be persecu
tors ; and, by the shock of all confidence and faith,
society was shaken to its foundations. Liberty we
had, but we dreaded its abuse almost as much as its
loss ; and the wise, who deplored the one, clearly fore
saw the other.

The peace of America hung by a thread, and fac
tions were already sharpening their weapons to cut it.
The project of three separate empires in America
was beginning to be broached, and the progress of li
centiousness would have soon rendered her citizens
unfit for liberty in either of them. An age of blood
and misery would have punished our disunion: but
these were not the considerations to deter ambition
from its purpose, while there were so many circum
stances in our political situation to favor it.

At this awful crisis, which all the wise so much
dreaded at the time, yet which appears, on a retros
pect, so much more dreadful than their fears ; some
man was wanting who possessed a commanding
power over the popular passions, but over whom
those passions had no power. That man was WASH
INGTON.

His name, at the head of such a list of worthies as
would reflect honor on any country, had its proper
weight with all the enlightened, and with almost all

146 MR. AMES' EULOGY

the well disposed among the less informed citizens,
and, blessed be God ! the constitution was adopted.
Yes, to the eternal honor of America among the na
tions of the earth, it was adopted, in spite of the ob
stacles, which, in any other country, and, perhaps, in
any other age of this, would have been insurmounta
ble; in spite of the doubts and fears, which well
meaning prejudice creates for itself, and which party
so artfully inflames into stubbornness ; in spite of the
vice, which it has subjected to restraint, and which is,
therefore, its immortal and implacable foe ; in spite of
the oligarchies in some of the states, from whom it
snatched dominion; it was adopted, and our country
enjoys one more invaluable chance for its union and
happiness : invaluable ! if the retrospect of the dan
gers we have escaped shall sufficiently inculcate the
principles we have so tardily established. Perhaps
multitudes are not to be taught by their fears only,
without suffering much to deepen the impression ; for
experience brandishes in her school a whip of scor
pions, and teaches nations her summary lessons of
wisdom by the scars and wounds of their adversity.

The amendments which have been projected in some
of the states show, that, in them at least, these lessons
are not well remembered. In a confederacy of states,
some powerful, others weak, the weakness of the fede
ral union will, sooner or later, encourage, and will not
restrain, the ambition and injustice of the members :
the weak can no otherwise be strong or safe, but in
the energy of the national government. It is this de
fect, which the blind jealousy of the weak states not
urifrequently contributes to prolong, that has proved
fatal to all the confederations that ever existed.

Although it was impossible that such merit as WASH
INGTON'S should not produce envy, it was scarcely possi
ble that, with such a transcendent reputation, he -should
have rivals. Accordingly, he was unanimously chosen
President of the United States.

As a general and a patriot, the measure of his

ON WASHINGTON. 147

glory was already full; there was no fame left for
him to excel but his own ; and even that task, the
mightiest of all his labors, his civil magistracy has ac
complished.

No sooner did the new government begin its auspi
cious course, than order seemed to arise out of confu
sion. Commerce and industry awoke, and were
cheerful at their labors; for credit and confidence
awoke with them. Everywhere was the appearance
of prosperity; and the only fear was, that its progress
was too rapid to consist with the purity and simplicity
of ancient manners. The cares and labors of the
President were incessant : his exhortations, example
and authority, were employed to excite zeal and activi
ty for the public service : able officers were selected,
only for their merits ; and some of them remarkably
distinguished themselves by their successful manage
ment of the public business. Government was admin
istered with such integrity, without mystery, and in so
prosperous a course, that it seemed to be wholly em
ployed in acts of beneficence. Though it has made
many thousand malecontents, it has never, by its rigor
or injustice, made one man wretched.

Such was the state of public affairs ; and did it not
seem perfectly to ensure uninterrupted harmony to the
citizens ? Did they not, in respect to their govern
ment and its administration, possess their whole heart's
desire ? They had seen and suffered long the want of
an efficient constitution ; they had freely ratified it ;
they saw WASHINGTON, their tried friend, the father of
his country, invested with its powers ; they knew that
he could not exceed or betray them, without forfeiting
his own reputation. Consider, for a moment, what a
reputation it was : such as no man ever before possess
ed by so clear a title, and in so high a degree. His
fame seemed in its purity to exceed even its brightness ;
office took honor from his acceptance, but conferred
none. Ambition stood awed and darkened by his
shadow. For where, through the wide earth, was the
man so vain as to dispute precedence with him ; or

148 MR. AMES' EULOGY

what were the honors that could make the possessor
WASHINGTON'S superior ? Refined and complex as the
ideas of virtue are, even the gross could discern in his
life the infinite superiority of her rewards. Mankind
perceived some change in their ideas of greatness ;
the splendor of power, and even of the name of con
queror, had grown dim in their eyes. They did not
know that WASHINGTON could augment his fame ; but
they knew and felt, that the world's wealth, and its
empire too, would be a bribe far beneath his accept
ance.

This is not exaggeration : never was confidence in
a man and a chief magistrate more widely diffused, or
more solidly established.

If it had been in the nature of man, that we should
enjoy liberty, without the agitations of party, the United
States had a right, under these circumstances, to ex
pect it: but it was impossible. Where there is no li
berty, they may be exempt from party. It will seem
strange, but it scarcely admits a doubt, that there are
fewer malecontents in Turkey, than in any free state
in the world. Where the people have no power, they
enter into no contests, and are not anxious to know
how they shall use it. The spirit of discontent be
comes torpid for want of employment, and sighs itself
to rest. The people sleep soundly in their chains,
and do not even dream of their weight. They lose
their turbulence with their energy, and become as
tractable as any other animals : a state of degrada
tion, in which they extort our scorn, and engage our
pity, for the misery they do not feel. Yet that heart is
a base one, and fit only for a slave's bosom, that would
not bleed freely, rather than submit to such a con
dition ; for liberty, with all its parties and agitations,
is more desirable than slavery. Who would not pre
fer the republics of ancient Greece, where liberty once
subsisted in its excess, its delirium, terrible in its
charms, and glistening to the last with the blaze of
the very fire that consumed it ?

I do not know that I ought, but I am sure that I do.

ON WASHINGTON. 149

prefer those republics to the dozing slavery of the
modern Greece, where the degraded wretches have
suffered scorn till they merit it, where they tread on
classic ground, on the ashes of heroes and patriots,
unconscious of their ancestry, ignorant of the nature,
and almost of the name of liberty, and insensible even
to the passion for it. Who, on this contrast, can for
bear to say. it is the modern Greece that lies buried,
that sleeps forgotten in the caves of Turkish dark
ness ? It is the ancient Greece that lives in remem
brance, that is still bright with glory, still fresh in im
mortal youth. They are unworthy of liberty, who en
tertain a less exalted idea of its excellence. The mis
fortune is, that those, who profess to be its most pas
sionate admirers, have, generally, the least compre
hension of its hazards and impediments : they expect,
that an enthusiastic admiration of its nature will re
concile the multitude to the irksomeness of its re
straints. Delusive expectation ! WASHINGTON was
not thus deluded. We have his solemn warning
against the often fatal propensities of liberty. He had
reflected, that men are often false to their country and
their honor, false to duty and even to their interest, but
multitudes of men are never long false or deaf to their
passions : these will find obstacles in the laws, asso
ciates in party. The fellowships thus formed are more
intimate, and impose commands more imperious, than
those of society.

Thus party forms a state within the state, and is ani
mated by a rivalship, fear and hatred, of its superior.

When this happens, the merits of the government
will become fresh provocations and offences, for they
are the merits of an enemy. No wonder, then, that
as soon as party found the virtue and glory of WASHING
TON were obstacles, the attempt was made, by calum
ny, to surmount them both. For this, the greatest of
all his trials, we know that he was prepared. He
knew, that the government must possess sufficient
strength from within or without, or fall a victim to

VOL. v. 20

MR. AMES' EULOGY

faction. This interior strength was plainly inade
quate to its defence, unless it could be reinforced from
without by the zeal and patriotism of the citizens ; and
this latter resource was certainly as accessible to pre
sident WASHINGTON, as to any chief magistrate that
ever lived. The life of the federal government, he
considered, was in the breath of the people's nostrils :
whenever they should happen to be so infatuated or
inflamed, as to abandon its defence, its end must be
as speedy, and might be as tragical as the constitu
tion for France.

While the President was thus administering the gov
ernment in so wise and just a manner, as to engage
the great majority of the enlightened and virtuous citi
zens to co-operate with him for its support, and while
he indulged the hope that time and habit were con
firming their attachment, the French revolution had
reached that point in its progress, when its terrible
principles began to agitate all civilized nations. J
will not, on this occasion, detain you to express, though
my thoughts teem with it, my deep abhorrence of that
revolution; its despotism, by the mob or the military,
from the first, and its hypocrisy of morals to the last.
Scenes have passed there which exceed description, and
which, for other reasons, I will not attempt to describe ;
for it would not be possible, even at this distance of
time, and with the sea between us and France, to go
through with the recital of them, without perceiving
horror gather, like a frost, about the heart, and almost
stop its pulse. That revolution has been constant in
nothing but its vicissitudes, and its promises ; always
delusive, but always renewed, to establish philosophy
by crimes, and liberty by the sword. The people of
France, if they are not like the modern Greeks, find
their cap of liberty is a soldier's helmet ; and with all
their imitation of dictators and consuls, their exactest
similitude to these Roman ornaments, is in their chains.
The nations of Europe perceive another resemblance,
in their all-conquering ambition.

ON WASHINGTON. 151

But it is only the influence of that event on America,
jind on the measures of the President, that belongs to
my subject. It would be ingratefully wrong to his
character, to be silent in respect to a part of it, which
has the most signally illustrated his virtues.

The genuine character of that revolution is not even
yet so well understood, as the dictates of self-preserva
tion require it should be. The chief duty and care of
all governments is to protect the rights of property,
and the tranquillity of society. The leaders of the
French revolution, from the beginning, excited the
poor against the rich. This has made the rich poor,
but it will never make the poor rich. On the contrary,
they were used only as blind instruments to make those
leaders masters, first of the adverse party, and then
of the state. Thus the powers of the state were
turned round into a direction exactly contrary to
the proper one, not to preserve tranquillity and
restrain violence, but to excite violence by the lure
of power, and plunder, and vengeance. Thus all
Prance has been, and still is, as much the prize of the
ruling party, as a captured ship ; and if any right or
possession has escaped confiscation, there is none
that has not been liable to it.

Thus it clearly appears, that, in its origin, its charac
ter, and its means, the government of that country is
revolutionary : that is, not only different from, but di
rectly contrary to, every regular and well-ordered so
ciety. It is a danger, similar in its kind, and at least
equal in degree, to that, with which ancient Rome me
naced her enemies. The allies of Rome were slaves;
and it cost some hundred years' efforts of her policy and
arms, to make her enemies her allies. Nations, at this
day, can trust no better to treaties ; they cannot even
trust to arms, unless they are used with a spirit and
perseverance becoming the magnitude of their danger.
For the French revolution has been, from the first, hos
tile to all right and justice, to all peace and order in so-
ciety ; and therefore, its very existence has been a state
of warfare against the civilized world, and most of all

152 . MR. AMES' EULOGY

against free and orderly republics, for such are nevei
without factions, ready to be the allies of France, and
to aid her in the work of destruction. Accordingly,
scarcely any but republics have they subverted. Such
governments, by showing in practice what republican
liberty is, detect French imposture, and show what their
pretexts are not.

To subvert them, therefore, they had, besides the
facility that faction affords, the double excitement of
removing- a reproach, and converting their greatest
obstacles into their most efficient auxiliaries.

Who, then, on careful reflection, will be surprised,
that the French and their partizans instantly conceiv
ed the desire, and made the most powerful attempts,
to revolutionize the American government? But it
will hereafter seem strange, that their excesses should
be excused, as the effects of a struggle for liberty ;
and that so many of our citizens should be flattered,
while they were insulted with the idea, that our exam
ple was copied, and our principles pursued. Nothing
was ever more false, or more fascinating. Our liber
ty depends on our education, our laws and habits, to
which even prejudices yield ; on the dispersion of our
people on farms, and on the almost equal diffusion of
property ; it is founded on morals and religion, whose
authority reigns in the heart ; and on the influence all
these produce on public opinion, before that opinion
governs rulers. Here liberty is restraint; there it is
violence : here it is mild and cheering, like the morn
ing sun of our summer, brightening the hills and mak
ing the vallies green ; there it is like the sun, when its
rays dart pestilence on the sands of Africa. Ameri
can liberty calms and restrains the licentious passions,
like an angel that says to the winds and troubled seas,
be still. But how has French licentiousness appeared
to the wretched citizens of Switzerland and Venice ?
Do not their haunted imaginations, even when they
wake, represent her as a monster, with eyes that flash
wildfire, hands that hurl thunderbolts, a voice that
shakes the foundation of the hills ? She stands, and

ON WASHINGTON. 153

her ambition measures the earth ; she speaks, and an
epidemic fury seizes the nations.

Experience is lost upon us, if we deny, that it had
seized a large part of the American nation. It is as
sober and intelligent, as free, and as worthy to be
free, as any in the world ; yet, like all other people,
we have passions and prejudices, and they had re
ceived a violent impulse, which, for a time, misled us.

Jacobinism had become here, as in France, rather
a sect than a party, inspiring a fanaticism that was
equally intolerant and contagious. The delusion was
general enough to be thought the voice of the people,
therefore, claiming authority without proof, and jealous
enough to exact acquiescence without a murmur of
contradiction. Some progress was made in training
multitudes to be vindictive and ferocious. To them
nothing seemed amiable, but the revolutionary justice
of Paris; nothing terrible, but the government and
justice of America. The very name of patriots was
claimed and applied, in proportion as the citizens had
alienated their hearts from America, and transferred
their affections to their foreign corrupter. Party dis
cerned its intimate connexion of interest with France,
and consummated its profligacy by yielding to foreign
influence.

The views of these allies required, that this country
should engage in war with Great Britain. Nothing
less would give to France all the means of annoying
this dreaded rival : nothing less would ensure the sub
jection of America, as a satellite to the ambition of
France : nothing else could make a revolution here
perfectly inevitable.

For this end, the minds of the citizens were artfully
inflamed, and the moment was watched, and impatient
ly waited for, when their long heated passions should
be in fusion, to pour them forth, like the lava of a vol
cano, to blacken and consume the peace and govern
ment of our country.

The systematic operations of a faction, under for-

MR. AMES' EULOGY

eign influence, had begun to appear, and were succes
sively pursued, in a mariner too deeply alarming to be
soon forgotten. Who of us does not remember this
worst of evils in this worst of ways ? Shame would
forget, if it could, that, in one of the states, amend
ments were proposed to break down the federal se
nate, which, as in the state governments, is a great
bulwark of the public order. To break down another,
an extravagant judiciary power was claimed for states.
In another state, a rebellion was fomented by the agent
of France : and who, without fresh indignation, can
remember, that the powers of government were open
ly usurped, troops levied, and ships fitted out to fight
for her ? Nor can any true friend to our government
consider without dread, that, soon afterwards, the
treaty-making power was boldly challenged for a
branch of the government, from which the constitution
has wisely withholden it.

I am oppressed, and know riot how to proceed with
my subject. WASHINGTON, blessed be God ! who en
dued him with wisdom and clothed him with power ;
WASHINGTON issued his proclamation of neutrality, and,
at an early period, arrested the intrigues of France
and the passions of his countrymen, on the very edge
of the precipice of war and revolution.

This act of firmness, at the hazard of his reputation
and peace, entitles him to the name of the first of pat
riots. Time was gained for the citizens to recover
their virtue and good sense, and they soon recovered
them. The crisis was passed, and America was
saved.

You and I, most respected fellow-citizens, should be
sooner tired than satisfied in recounting the particulars
of this illustrious man's life.

How great he appeared, while he administered the
government, how much greater when he retired from
it, how he accepted the chief military command under
his wise and upright successor, how his life was un
spotted like his fame, and how his death was worthy

ON WASHINGTON, 155

of his life, are so many distinct subjects of instruction,
and each of them singly more than enough for an eulo-
gium. I leave the task, however, to history and to
posterity ; they will be faithful to it.

It is not impossible, that some will affect to consi
der the honors paid to this great patriot by the nation,
as excessive, idolatrous, and degrading to freemen,
who are all equal. I answer, that, refusing to virtue
its legitimate honors, would not prevent their being
lavished, in future, on any worthless and ambitious fa
vorite. If this day's example should have its natural
effect, it will be salutary. Let such honors be so con
ferred only when, in future, they shall be so merited :
then the public sentiment will not be misled, nor the
principles of a just equality corrupted. The best evi
dence of reputation is a man's whole life. We have
now, alas ! all WASHINGTON'S before us. There has
scarcely appeared a really great man, whose charac
ter has been more admired in his lifetime, or less cor
rectly understood by his admirers. When it is com
prehended, it is no easy task to delineate its excel
lences in such a manner, as to give to the portrait
both interest and resemblance ; for, it requires thought
and study to understand the true ground of the su
periority of his character over many others, whom he
resembled in the principles of action, and even in the
manner of acting. But, perhaps, he excels all the
great men that ever lived, in the steadiness of his ad
herence to his maxims of life, and in the uniformity
of all his conduct to the same maxims. These max
ims, though wise, were yet not so remarkable for
their wisdom, as for their authority over his life : for.
if there were any errors in his judgment, (and he dis
covered as few as any man,) we know of no blemishes
in his virtue. He was the patriot without reproach :
he loved his country well enough to hold his success
in serving it an ample recompense. Thus far self-love
and love of country coincided : but when his country
needed sacrifices, that no other man could, or, per
haps, would be willing to make, he did not even hesi-

156 MR. AMES' EULOGY

tate. This was virtue in its most exalted character.
More than once he put his fame at hazard, when he
had reason to think it would be sacrificed, at least in
this age. Two instances cannot be denied : when the
army was disbanded ; and again, when he stood, like
Leonidas at the pass of Thermopyte, to defend our
independence against France.

It is, indeed, almost as difficult to draw his charac
ter, as the portrait of virtue. The reasons are simi
lar : our ideas of moral excellence are obscure, be
cause they are complex, and we are obliged to resort
to illustrations. WASHINGTON'S example is the hap
piest, to show what virtue is ; and, to delineate his
character, we naturally expatiate on the beauty of
virtue : much must be felt, and much imagined. His
pre-eminence is not so much to be seen in the display
of any one virtue, as in the possession of them all, and
in the practice of the most difficult. Hereafter, there
fore, his character must be studied before it will be
striking ; and then it will be admitted as a model, a
precious one to a free republic !

It is no less difficult to speak of his talents. They
were adapted to lead, without dazzling mankind ; and
to draw forth and employ the talents of others, with
out being misled by them. In this he was certainly
superior, that he neither mistook nor misapplied his
own. His great modesty and reserve would have
concealed them, if great occasions had not called
them forth ; and then, as he never spoke from the af
fectation to shine, nor acted from any sinister motives,
it is from their effects only that we are to judge of their
greatness and extent. In public trusts, where men.
acting conspicuously, are cautious, and in those pri
vate concerns, where few conceal or resist their weak
nesses, WASHINGTON was uniformly great, pursuing
right conduct from right maxims. His talents were
such as assist a sound judgment, and ripen with it.
His prudence was consummate, and seemed to take
the direction of his powers and passions ; for, as a
soldier, he was more solicitous to avoid mistakes that

ON WASHINGTON. 157

might be fatal, than to perform exploits that are bril
liant ; and as a statesman, to adhere fo just principles,
however old, than to pursue novelties ; and therefore,
in both characters, his qualities were singularly adapt
ed to the interest, and were tried in the greatest perils
of the country. His habits of inquiry were so far re
markable, that he was never satisfied with investigat
ing, nor desisted from it, so long as he had less than
all the light that he could obtain upon a subject, and
then he made his decision without bias.

This command over the partialities that so general
ly stop men short, or turn them aside in their pursuit of
truth, is one of the chief causes of his unvaried course
of right conduct in so many difficult scenes, where eve
ry human actor must be presumed to err. If he had
strong passions, he had learned to subdue them, and
to be moderate and mild. If he had weaknesses, he
concealed them, which is rare, and excluded them
from the government of his temper and conduct,
which is still more rare. If he loved fame, he never
made improper compliances for what is called popu
larity. The fame he enjoyed is of the kind that will
last forever ; yet it was rather the effect, than the mo
tive of his conduct. Some future Plutarch will search
for a parallel to his character. Epaminondas is, per
haps, the brightest name of all antiquity. Our WASH
INGTON resembled him in the purity and ardor of his
patriotism ; and, like him, he first exalted the glory of
his country. There, it is to be hoped, the parallel
ends : for Thebes fell with Epaminondas. But such
comparisons cannot be pursued far, without departing
from the similitude. For we shall find it as difficult
to compare great men as great rivers : some we ad
mire for the length and rapidity of their current, and
the grandeur of their cataracts ; others, for the majes
tic silence and fulness of their streams: we cannot
bring them together to measure the difference of their
waters. The unambitious life of WASHINGTON, declin
ing fame, yet courted by it, seemed, like the Ohio, to

VOL v. 21

158 MR. AMES' EULOGY, &c.

choose its long way through solitudes, diffusing fer
tility ; or like his* own Potomac, widening and deep
ening his channel, as he approaches the sea, and dis
playing most the usefulness and serenity of his great
ness towards the end of his course. Such a citizen
would do honor to any country. The constant vene
ration and affection of his country will show, that it
was worthy of such a citizen.

However his military fame may excite the wonder of
mankind, it is chiefly by his civil magistracy, that his
example will instruct them. Great generals have
arisen in all ages of the world, and perhaps most in
those of despotism and darkness. In times of vio
lence and convulsion, they rise, by the force of the
whirlwind, high enough to ride in it, and direct the
storm. Like meteors, they glare on the black clouds
with a splendor, that, while it dazzles and terrifies,
makes nothing visible but the darkness. The fame
of heroes is indeed growing vulgar : they multiply in
every long war ; they stand in history, and thicken in
their ranks, almost as undistinguished as their own
soldiers.

But such a chief magistrate as WASHINGTON, appears
like the pole star in a clear sky, to direct the skilful
statesman. His presidency will form an epoch, and
be distinguished as the age of WASHINGTON. Already
it assumes its high place in the political region. Like
the milky-way, it whitens along its allotted portion of
the hemisphere. The latest generations of men will
survey, through the telescope of history, the space
where so many virtues blend their rays, and delight to
separate them into groups and distinct virtues. As
the best illustration of them, the living monument, to
which the first of patriots would have chosen to con
sign his fame, it is my earnest prayer to heaven, that
our country may subsist, even to that late day, in the
plenitude of its liberty and happiness, and mingle its
mild glory with WASHINGTON'S.

EULOGY ON WASHINGTON,

DELIVERED FEBRUARY 22, 1800, BY APPOINTMENT OF A
NUMBER OF THE CLERGY OF. NEW YORK.

BY JOHN M. MASON,

PASTOR OF THE ASSOCIATE-REFORMED CHURCH IN THE CITY OF

NEW YORK.

FELLOW-CITIZENS.

THE offices of this day belong less to eloquence than
to grief. We celebrate one of those great events
which, by uniting public calamity with private afflic
tion, create in every bosom a response to the throes of
an empire. God, who doeth wonders ; whose ways
must be adored, but not questioned, in severing from
the embraces of America her first-beloved patriot, has
imposed on her the duty of blending impassioned feel
ing with profound and unmurmuring submission. An
assembled nation, lamenting a father in their departed
chief; absorbing every inferior consideration in the
sentiment of their common loss ; mingling their recol
lections and their anticipations, their wishes, their re
grets, their sympathies and their tears, is a spectacle
not more tender than awful, and excites emotions too
mighty for utterance. I should have no right to com
plain, Americans, if, instead of indulging me with your
attention, you should command me to retire, and leave
you to weep in the silence of wo. I should deserve the
reprimand, were I to appear before you with the pre
tensions of eulogy. No! Eulogy has mistaken her
province and her powers, when she assumes for her
theme the glory of WASHINGTON. His deeds and his
virtues are his high eulogium — his deeds most fami-

160 MR. MASON'S EULOGY

liar to your memories, his virtues most dear to your af
fections. To me, therefore, nothing is permitted but
to borrow from yourselves. And though a pencil, more
daring than mine, would languish in attempting to re
trace the living lines which the finger of truth has
drawn upon your hearts, you will bear with me, while,
on a subject which dignifies every thing related to it,
4 1 tell you that which you yourselves do know.'

The name of WASHINGTON, connected with all that
is most brilliant in the history of our country, and in
human character, awakens sensations which agitate
the fervors of youth, and warm the chill bosom of age.
Transported to the times when America rose to repel
her wrongs, and to claim her destinies, a scene of
boundless grandeur bursts upon our view. Long had
her filial duty expostulated with parental injustice.
Long did she deprecate the rupture of those ties which
she had been proud of preserving and displaying. But
her humble entreaty spurned, aggression followed by
the rod, and the rod by scorpions, having changed
remonstrance into murmur, and murmur into resist
ance, she transfers her grievances from the throne
of earth to the throne of heaven ; and precedes by an
appeal to the God of judgment, her appeal to the sword
of war.

At issue now with the mistress of the seas ; unfur
nished with equal means of defence; the convulsive
shock approaching; and every evil omen passing be
fore her, one step of rashness or of folly may seal her
doom. In this accumulation of trouble, who shall com
mand her confidence, and face her dangers, and con
duct her cause ? God, whose kingdom ruleth over all,
prepares from afar the instruments best adapted to
his purpose. By an influence which it would be as ir
rational to dispute as it is vain to scrutinize, he stirs up
the spirit of the statesman and the soldier. Minds, on
which he has bestowed the elements of greatness, are
brought, by his providence, into contact with exigen
cies which rouse them into action. It is in the season

ON WASHINGTON. 161

of effort and of peril that impotence disappears, and
energy arises. The whirlwind, which sweeps away the
glow-worm, uncovers the fire of genius, and kindles it
into a blaze, that irradiates, at once, both the zenith and
the poles.

But among the heroes who sprung from obscurity,
when the college, the counting-house, and the plough
teemed with " thunderbolts of war," none could, in all re
spects, meet the wants and the wishes of America. She
required, in her leader, a man reared under her own
eye ; who combined with distinguished talent, a cha
racter above suspicion ; who had added to his physical
and moral qualities the experience of difficult service ;
a man, who should concentrate in himself the public af
fections and confidences; who should know how. to
multiply the energies of every other man under his di
rection, and to make disaster itself the means of suc
cess — his arm a fortress and his name a host. Such a
man it were almost presumption to expect; but such a
man all-ruling heaven had provided, and that man was
WASHINGTON.

Pre-eminent already in worth, he is summoned to
the pre-eminence of toil and of danger. Unallured by
the charms of opulence : unappalled by the hazard of
a dubious warfare : unmoved by the prospect of being,
in the event of failure, the first and most conspicuous
victim, he obeys the summons, because he loves his
duty. The resolve is- firm, for the probation is terri
ble. His theatre is a world ; his charge, a family of
nations ; the interest staked, in his hands, the prosperi
ty of millions unborn in ages to come; his means,
under aid from on high, the resources of his own
breast, with the raw recruits and irregular supplies of
distracted colonies. O crisis worthy of such a hero !
Followed by her little bands, her prayers and her tears,
WASHINGTON espouses the quarrel of his country. As
he moves on to the conflict, every heart palpitates, and
every knee trembles. The foe, alike valiant and vete
ran, presents no easy conquest, nor aught inviting but

1(32 MR. MASON'S EULOGY

to those who had consecrated their blood to the public
weal. The Omnipotent, who allots great enjoyment as
the meed of great exertion, had ordained that America
should be free ; but that she should learn to value the
blessing by the price of its acquisition. She shall go
to a " wealthy place," but her way is " through fire and
through water." Many a generous chief must bleed, and
many a gallant youth sink, at his side, into the surprised
grave ; the field must be heaped with slain ; the pur
ple torrent must roll, ere the angel of peace descend
with his olive. It is here, amid devastation, and hor
ror, and death, that WASHINGTON must reap his laurels,
and engrave his trophies on the shields of immortality.
Shall Delaware and Princeton— shall Monmouth
and York — But I may not particularize ; far less re
peat the tale which babes recite, which poets sing, and
fame has published to the listening world. Every scene
of his action was a scene of his triumph. Now, he
saved the republic by more than Fabian caution ; now,
he avenged her by more than Carthagenian fierceness.
While, at every stroke, her forests and her hills re
echoed to her shout, " The sword of the LORD and of
WASHINGTON!" Nor was this the vain applause of
partiality and enthusiasm. The blasted schemes of
Britain ; her broken arid her captive hosts, proclaimed
the terror of his arms. Skilled were her chiefs, and
brave her legions ; but bravery and skill rendered them
a conquest more worthy of WASHINGTON. True, he
suffered, in his turn, repulse and even defeat. It was
both natural and needful. Unchequered with reverse,
his story would have resembled rather the fictions of
romance, than the truth of narrative; and had he been
neither defeated nor repulsed, we had never seen all
the grandeur of his soul. He arrayed himself in fresh
honors by that which ruins even the great — vicissitude.
He could not only subdue an enemy, but what is infi
nitely more, he could subdue misfortune. With an
equanimity which gave temperance to victory, and
cheerfulness to disaster, he balanced the fortunes of

ON WASHINGTON. 163

the state. In the face of hostile prowess ; in the midst
of mutiny and treason ; surrounded with astonishment,
irresolution and despondence, WASHINGTON remained
erect, unmoved, invincible. Whatever ills America
might endure in maintaining her rights, she exulted
that she had nothing to fear from her commander-in-
chief. The event justified her most sanguine presages.
That invisible hand which girded him at first, con
tinued to guard and to guide him through the suc
cessive stages of the revolution. Nor did he ac
count it a weakness to bend the knee in homage to
its supremacy, and prayer for its direction. This was
the armor of WASHINGTON ; this the salvation of his
country.

The hope of her reduction at length abandoned ;
her war of liberty brought, in the establishment of in
dependence, to that honorable conclusion for which it
had been undertaken, the hour arrived when he was
to resign the trust which he had accepted with diffi
dence. To a mind less pure and elevated, the situa
tion of America would have furnished the pretext, as
well as the means, of military usurpation. Talents
equal to daring enterprise ; the derangement of pub
lic affairs; unbounded popularity; and the devotion
of a suffering army, would have been to every other a
strong, and to almost any other, an irresistible temp
tation. In WASHINGTON they did not produce even
the pain of self-denial. They added the last proof of
his disinterestedness ; and imposed on his country the
last obligation to gratitude. Impenetrable by cor
rupting influence ; deaf to honest but erring solicita
tion ; irreconcileable with every disloyal sentiment, he
urged the necessity, and set the example of laying
down, in peace, arms assumed for the common de
fence.* But to separate from the companions of his
danger and his glory, was, even for WASHINGTON, a
difficult task. About to leave them forever, a thousand

* Morris' Oration.

164 MR. MASON'S EULOGY

sensations rushed upon his heart, and all the soldier
melted in the man. He, who has no tenderness, has
no magnanimity. WASHINGTON could vanquish, arid
WASHINGTON could weep. Never was affection more
cordially reciprocated. The grasped hand; the si
lent anguish ; the spontaneous tear trickling down the
scarred cheek ; the wistful look, as he passed, after
the warrior who should never again point their way to
victory; form a scene for nature's painter, and for
nature's bard.

But we must not lose, in our sensibility, the remem
brance of his penetration, his prudence, his regard of
public honor, and of public faith. Abhorring outrage ;
jealous for the reputation, and dreading the excesses,
of even a gallant army, flushed with conquest, prompt
ed by incendiaries, and sheltered by a semblance of
right, his last act of authority is to dismiss them to
their homes without entering the capital. Accompa
nied with a handful of troops, he repairs to the coun
cil of the states, and, through them, surrenders to his
country the sword which he had drawn in her defence.
Singular phenomenon ! WASHINGTON becomes a pri
vate citizen. He exchanges supreme command for
the tranquillity of domestic life. Go, incomparable
man! to adorn no less the civic virtues, than the splen
did achievements of the field : go, rich in the con
sciousness of thy high deserts : go, with the admira
tion of the world, with the plaudit of millions, and the
orisons of millions more for thy temporal and thine
eternal bliss !

The glory of WASHINGTON seemed now complete.
While the universal voice proclaimed that he might
decline, with honor, every future burden, it was a wish
arid an opinion almost as universal, that he would not;
jeopardize the fame which he had so nobly won. Had
personal considerations swayed his mind, this would
have been his own decision. But, untutored in the
philosophism of the age, he had not learned to sepa
rate the maxims of wisdom from the injunctions of

ON WASHINGTON. 165

duty. His soul was not debased by that moral cow
ardice which fears to risk popularity for the general
good. Having assisted in the formation of an efficient
government which he had refused to dictate or enforce
at the mouth of his cannon, he was ready to contribute
the weight of his character to insure its effect. And
his country rejoiced in an opportunity of testifying,
that, much as she loved and trusted others, she still
loved arid trusted him most. Hailed, by her unani
mous suffrage, the pilot of the state, he approaches
the awful helm, and grasping it with equal firmness
and ease, demonstrates that forms of power cause no
embarrassment to him.

In so novel an experiment, as a nation framing a
government for herself under no impulse but that of
reason ; adopting it through no force but the force of
conviction; and putting it into operation without
bloodshed or violence, it was all-important that her
first magistrate should possess her unbounded good
will. Those elements of discord which lurked in the
diversity of local interest ; in the collision of political
theories ; in the irritations of party ; in the disappoint
ed or gratified ambition of individuals; and which,
notwithstanding her graceful transition, threatened the
harmony of America, it was for WASHINGTON alone to
control and repress. His tried integrity, his ardent
patriotism, were instead of a volume of arguments for
the excellence of that system which he approved and
supported. Among the simple and honest, whom no
artifice was omitted to ensnare, there were thousands
who knew little of the philosophy of government, and
less of the nice machinery of the constitution; but
they knew that WASHINGTON was wise and good ; they
knew it was impossible that he should betray them ;
and by this they were rescued from the fangs of fac
tion. Ages will not furnish so instructive a comment
on that cardinal virtue of republicans, confidence in
the men of their choice; nor a more salutary antidote
against the pestilential principle, that the soul of a re-
y. 22

MR. MASON'S EULOGY

public is jealousy. At the commencement of her fede
ral government, mistrust would have ruined America;
in confidence, she found her safety.

The re-appearance of WASHINGTON as a statesman,
excited the conjecture of the old world, and the anxie
ty of the new. His martial fame had fixed a criterion,
however inaccurate, of his civil administration. Mili
tary genius does neither confer nor imply political
ability. Whatever merit may be attached to the fa
culty of arranging the principles, and prosecuting the
details, of an army, it must be conceded that vaster
comprehensions belong to the statesman. Ignorance,
vanity, the love of paradox, and the love of mischief,
affecting to sneer at the " mystery of government,"
have, indeed, taught, that common sense and common
honesty are his only requisites. The nature of things
and the experience of every people, in every age, teach
a different doctrine. America had multitudes who
possessed both those qualities, but she had only one
WASHINGTON. To adjust, in the best compromise, a
thousand interfering views, so as to effect the greatest
good of the whole with the least inconvenience to the
parts; to curb the dragon of faction by means which
insure the safety of public liberty ; to marshal opinion
and prejudice among the auxiliaries of the law; in
fine, to touch the mainspring of national agency, so as
to preserve the equipoise of its powers, and to make
the feeblest movements of the extremities accord with
the impulse at the centre, is only for genius of the high
est order. To excel equally in military and political
science, has been the praise of a few chosen spirits,
among whom, with a proud preference, we enrol the
father of our country.

It was the fortune of WASHINGTON to direct transac
tions of which the repetition is hardly within the limits
of human possibilities. When he entered on his first
presidency, all the interests of the continent were vi
brating through the arch of political uncertainty. The
departments of the new government were to be mark-

ON WASHINGTON. 167

ed out, and filled up ; foreign relations to be regulat
ed ; the physical and moral strength of the nation to
be organized ; and that, at a time when scepticism in
politics, no less than in religion and morals, was pre
paring, throughout Europe, to spring the mine of revo
lution and ruin. In discharging his first duties, that
same intelligent, cautious, resolute procedure, which
had rendered him the bulwark of war, now exhibited
him as the guardian of peace. Appropriation of ta
lent to employment, is one of the deep results of politi
cal sagacity. And in his selection of men for office,
WASHINGTON displayed a knowledge of character and
of business, a contempt of favoritism, and a devotion
to the public welfare, which permitted the General to
be rivalled only by the President.

Under such auspices, the fruit and the pledge of di
vine blessing, America rears her head, and recovers
her vigor. Agriculture laughs on the land : com
merce ploughs the wave : peace rejoices her at home ;
and she grows into respect abroad. Ah ! too happy,
to progress without interruption. The explosions of
Europe bring new vexations to her, and new trials and
new glories to her WASHINGTON. Vigilant and faith
ful, he hears the tempest roar from afar, warns her of
its approach, and prepares for averting its dangers.
Black are the heavens, and angry the billows, and nar
row and perilous the passage. But his composure, dig
nity and firmness, are equal to the peril. Unseduce<"
by fraud, uriterrified by threat, unawed by clamor, h<
holds on his steady way, and again he saves his coun
try. With less decision on the part of WASHINGTON,
a generous, but mistaken ardor, would have plunged
her into the whirlpool, and left her till this hour the
sport of the contending elements. Americans! bow
to that magnanimous policy, which protected your
dearest interests at the hazard of incurring your dis
pleasure. It was thus that WASHINGTON proved him
self, not in the cant of the day, but in the procurement
of substantial good, in stepping between them and per
dition, the servant of the people, ;

168 MR. MASON'S EULOGY

The historian of this period will have to record a
revolt, raised by infatuation, against the law of the
land.* He will have to record the necessity which
compelled even WASHINGTON to suppress it by the
sword. But he will have to record also his gentleness
and his lenity. Deeds of severity were his sad tribute
to justice : deeds of humanity the native suggestions
of his heart.

Eight years of glorious administration created a
claim on the indulgence of his country, which none
could think of disputing, but which all lamented should
be urged. The ends, which rendered his services in
dispensable, being mostly attained, he demands his
restoration to private life. Resigning, to an able suc
cessor, the reins which he had guided with charac
teristic felicity, he once more bids adieu to public ho
nors. Let not his motives be mistaken or forgotten. It
was for him to set as great examples in the relinquish-
ment, as in the acceptance of power. No mortified
ambition, no haughty disgusts, no expectation of high
er office, prompted his retreat. He knew, that for
eign nations considered his life as the bond, and his in
fluence as the vital spirit of our union. He knew,
that his own lustre threw a shade over others, not more
injurious to them than to his country. He wished to
dispel the enchantment of his own name : he wished to
relieve the apprehensions of America, by making her
sensible of her riches in other patriots ; to be a spec
tator of her prosperity under their management : and
to convince herself, and to convince the world, that
she depended less on him, than either her enemies or
her friends believed. And, therefore, he withdrew.

Having lavished all her honors, his country had
nothing more to bestow upon him except her blessing.
But he had more to bestow upon his country. His
views and his advice, the condensed wisdom of all his
reflection, observation and experience, he delivers to
his compatriots in a manual worthy of them to study,

* The Insurrection in Pennsvlvania in 1704.

ON WASHINGTON, 169

and of him to compose. And now, when they could
hope to enjoy only the satisfaction of still possessing
him, the pleasure of recounting his acts, and the bene
fit of practising his lessons, they accompany his retire
ment with their aspirations, that his evening may be
as serene, as his morning had been fair, and his noon
resplendent.

That he should ever again endure the solicitudes of
office, was rather to be deprecated than desired. Be
cause it must be a crisis singularly portentous, which
could justify another invasion of his repose. From
such a necessity we fondly promised ourselves exemp
tion. Flattering, fallacious security! Th£ sudden
whirlwind springs out of a calm. The revolutions of
a day proclaim that an empire was. However remote
the position of America ; however peaceful her charac
ter ; however cautious and equitable her policy ; she
was not to go unmolested by the gigantic fiend of Gal
lic domination. That she was free and happy, was
crime and provocation enough. He fastened on her
his murderous eye: he was preparing for her that
deadly embrace, in which nations, supine and credulous,
had already perished. Reduced to the alternative of
swelling the catalogue of his victims, or arguing her
cause with the bayonet and the ball, she bursts the ill-
fated bonds which had linked her to his destinies, and
assumes the tone and attitude of defiance. The gaunt
let is thrown. To advance is perilous : to retreat, de
struction. She looks wistfully round, and calls for
WASHINGTON. The well known voice, that voice,
which he had ever accounted a law, pierces the retreats
of Vernon, and thrills his bosom. Domestic enjoy
ments lose their charm; repose becomes to him inglo
rious; every sacrifice is cheap, and every exertion
easy, when his beloved country requires his aid. With
all the alacrity of youth, he flies to her succor. The
helmet of war presses his silver locks. His sword,
which dishonor had never tarnished, nor corruption
poisoned, he once more unsheaths, and prepares to re-

170 MR. MASON'S EULOGi

ceive on its point the insolence of that foe whose in
trigue he had foiled by his wisdom.

It must ever be difficult to compare the merits of
WASHINGTON'S characters, because he always appeared
greatest in that which he last sustained. Yet if there
is a preference, it must be assigned to the lieutenant-
general of the armies of America. Not because the
duties of that station were more arduous than those
which he had often performed, but because it more
fully displayed his magnanimity. While others be
come great^by elevation, WASHINGTON becomes great
er by condescension. Matchless patriot ! to stoop, on
public motives, to an inferior appointment, after pos
sessing and dignifying the highest offices ! Thrice fa
vored country, which boasts of such a citizen ! We
gaze with astonishment : we exult that we are Ameri
cans. We augur every thing great, and good, and
happy. But whence this sudden horror ? What
means that cry of agony ? Oh ! 'tis the shriek of
America ! The fairy vision is fled : WASHINGTON is —
no more ! — .

" How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished 1"

Daughters of America, who erst prepared the festal
bower and the laurel wreath, plant now the cypress
grove, and water it with tears.

" How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished I"

The death of WASHINGTON, Americans, has revealed
the extent of our loss. It has given us the final proof
that we never mistook him. Take his affecting testa
ment, and read the secrets of his soul. Read all the
power of domestic virtue. Read his strong love of let
ters and of liberty. Read his fidelity to republican
principle, and his jealousy of national character. Read
his devotedness to you in his military bequests to near
relations. "These swords," they are the words of
WASHINGTON, " these swords are accompanied with an

ON WASHINGTON, 171

injunction not to unsheath them for the purpose of
shedding of blood, except it be for self-defence, or
in defence of their country and its rights; and in
the latter case, to keep them unsheathed, and prefer
falling with them in their hands to the relinquishment
thereof."

In his acts, Americans, you have seen the man. In
the complicated excellence of character, he stands
alone. Let no future Plutarch attempt the iniquity of
parallel. Let no soldier of fortune, let no usurping
conqueror, let not Alexander or Caesar, let not Crom
well or Buonaparte, let none among the dead or the
living, appear in the same picture with WASHINGTON :
or let them appear as the shade to his light.

On this subject, my countrymen, it is for others to
speculate, but it is for us to feel. Yet, in proportion
to the severity of the stroke, ought to be our thknk-
fulriess, that it was not inflicted sooner. Through a
long series of years has God preserved our WASHING
TON a public blessing : and now that he has removed
him forever, shall we presume to say, What doest
thou ? Never did the tomb preach more powerfully
the dependence of all things on the will of the Most
High. The greatest of mortals crumble into dust, the
moment He commands, Return, ye children of men
WASHINGTON was but the instrument of a benignant
God. He sickens, he dies, that we may learn not to
trust in men, nor to make flesh our arm. But though
WASHINGTON is dead, Jehovah lives. God of our fa
thers! be our God, and the God of our children!
Thou art our refuge and our hope ; the pillar of our
strength ; the wall of our defence, and our unfading
glory !

Americans ! this God, who raised up WASHINGTON,
and gave you liberty, exacts from you the duty of
cherishing it with a zeal according to knowledge.
Never sully, by apathy or by outrage, your fair inherit
ance. Risk not, for one moment, on visionary theo
ries, the solid blessings of your lot. To you, particu-

172 MR- MASON'S EULOGY, &c.

larly, O youth of America ! applies the solemn charge.
In all the perils of your country, remember WASHING
TON. The freedom of reason and of right, has been
handed down to you on the point of the hero's sword.
Guard, with veneration, the sacred deposit. The
curse of ages will rest upon you, O youth of America !
if ever you surrender to foreign ambition, or domestic
lawlessness, the precious liberties for which WASHING
TON fought, and your fathers bled.

I cannot part with you, fellow-citizens, without urg
ing the long remembrance of our present assembly.
This day we wipe away the reproach of republics, that
they know not how to be grateful. In your treatment
of living patriots, recall your love and your regret of
WASHINGTON. Let not future inconsistency charge
this day with hypocrisy. Happy America, if she gives
an instance of universal principle in her sorrows for the
man " first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts
of his countrymen !"

AN ORATION,

DELIVERED AT PLYMOUTH DECEMBER 22, 1802,

AT THE ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATION OF THE FIRST
LANDING OF OUR ANCESTORS, AT THAT PLACE i

BY JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

AMONG the sentiments of most powerful operation
upon the human heart, and most highly honorable to
the human character, are those of veneration for our
forefathers, and of love for our posterity. They form the
connecting links between the selfish and the social pas
sions. By the fundamental principle of Christianity,
the happiness of the individual is interwoven, by innu
merable and imperceptible ties, with that of his con
temporaries : by the power of filial reverence and pa
rental affection, individual existence is extended be
yond the limits of individual life, and the happiness of
every age is chained .in mutual dependence upon that
of every other. Respect for his ancestors excites, in
the breast of man, interest in their history, attachment
to their characters, concern for their errors, involunta
ry pride in their virtues. Love for his posterity
spurs him to exertion for .their support, stimulates
him to virtue for their exarj^pie, and fills 'him with the
tenderest solicitude for their welfare. Man, therefore,
was not made for himself alonev\ vNo,v he was made/
for his country, by the obligations ^owfJ£the' social com-,
pact: he was made for his ;spj^jesv. by the Christian
duties of universal charity : ,he was made for all ages
past, by the sentiment of reverence for his forefathers ;
and he was made for all future times, by the impulse
of affection for his progeny. Under the influence of
these principles, " Existence sees him spurn her bound-
vet, v. • 23

174 MR. ADAMS' ORATION, AT

ed reign." They redeem his nature from the subjec
tion of time and space : he is no longer a " puny in
sect shivering at a breeze ;" he is the glory of crea
tion, formed to occupy all time and all extent:
bounded, during his residence upon earth, only by the
boundaries of the world, and destined to life and im
mortality in brighter regions, when the fabric of na
ture itself shall dissolve and perish.

The voice of history has not, in all its compass, a
note but answers in unison with these sentiments.
The barbarian chieftain, who defended his country
against the Roman invasion, driven to the remotest
extremity of Britain, and stimulating his followers to
battle, by all that has power of persuasion upon the
human heart, concludes his exhortation by an appeal to
these irresistible feelings* — " Think of your forefa
thers and of your posterity." The Romans them
selves, at the pinnacle of civilization, were actuated by
the game impressions, and celebrated, in anniversary
festivals, every great event which had signalized the
annals of their forefathers. To multiply instances,
where it were impossible to adduce an exception,
would be to waste your time and abuse your patience :
but in the sacred volume, which contains the sub
stance of our firmest faith and of our most precious
hopes, these passions not only maintain their highest
efficacy, but are sanctioned by the express injunctions
of the Divine Legislator to his chosen people.

The revolutions of time furnish no previous exam
ple of a nation shooting up to maturity and expanding
into greatness, with the rapidity which has characteriz
ed the growth of the American people. In the luxuriance
of youth, and in the vigor of manhood, it is pleasing and
instructive to look backwards upon the helpless days
of infancy : but, in the continual and essential changes
of a growing subject, the transactions of that early

Proinde ituri in aciem, et majores vestros et posteros cogitate.

GALGACUS in Vita Agricolac.

PLYMOUTH, DECEMBER 22, 1802. 175

period would be soon obliterated from the memory,
but for some periodical call of attention to aid the
silent records of the historian. Such celebrations
arouse and gratify the kindliest emotions of the bo
som. They are faithful pledges of the respect we
bear to the memory of our ancestors, and of the ten
derness with which we cherish the rising generation.
They introduce the sages and heroes of ages past to
the notice and emulation of succeeding times : they
are at once testimonials of our gratitude, and schools
of virtue to our children.

These sentiments are wise; they are honorable;
they are virtuous ; their cultivation is not merely in
nocent pleasure, it is incumbent duty. Obedient to
their dictates, you, my fellow-citizens, have instituted
and paid frequent observance to this annual solemnity.
And what event of weightier intrinsic importance, or
of more extensive consequences, was ever selected
for this honorary distinction ?

In reverting to the period of their origin, other na
tions have generally been compelled to plunge into
the chaos of impenetrable antiquity, or to trace a
lawless ancestry into the caverns of ravishers and rob
bers. It is your peculiar privilege to commemorate,
in this birthday of your nation, an event ascertained
in its minutest details : an event of which the principal
actors are known to you familiarly, as if belonging
to your own age: an event of a magnitude before
which imagination shrinks at the imperfection of her
powers. It is your further happiness to behold, in
those eminent characters who were most conspicuous
in accomplishing the settlement of your country, men
upon whose virtues you can dwell with honest exulta
tion. The founders of your race are not handed
down to you, like the father of the Roman people, as
the sucklings of a wolf. You are not descended from
a nauseous compound of fanaticism and sensuality,
whose only argument was the sword, and whose only
paradise was a brothel. No Gothic scourge of God;

176 Mil. ADAMS' ORATION, A I

no Vandal pest of nations ; no fabled fugitive from the
flames of Troy; no bastard Norman tyrant appears
among the list of worthies, who first landed on the
rock, which your veneration has preserved, as a last
ing monument of their achievement. The great ac
tors of the day we now solemnize, were illustrious by
their intrepid valor, no less than by their Christian
graces ; but the clarion of conquest has not blazoned
forth their names to all the winds of heaven. Their
glory has not been wafted over oceans of blood to the
remotest regions of the earth. They have not erect
ed to themselves colossal statues upon pedestals of
human bones, to provoke and insult the tardy hand of
heavenly retribution. But theirs was " the better for
titude of patience and heroic martyrdom." Theirs
was the gentle temper of Christian kindness ; the ri
gorous observance of reciprocal justice ; the uncon
querable soul of conscious integrity. Worldly fame
has been parsimonious of her favor to the memory of
those generous champions. Their numbers were
small; their stations in life obscure; the object of
their enterprize unostentatious ; the theatre of their
exploits remote : how could they possibly be favorites
of worldly fame ? — That common crier, whose exist
ence is only known by the assemblage of multitudes :
that pander of wealth and greatness, so eager to haunt
the palaces of fortune, and so fastidious to the house
less dignity of virtue : that parasite of pride, ever
scornful to meekness, and ever obsequious to insolent
power : that heedless trumpeter, whose ears are deaf
to modest merit, and whose eyes are blind to blood
less, distant excellence.

When the persecuted companions of Robinson, ex
iles from their native land, anxiously sued for the pri
vilege of removing a thousand leagues more distant to
an untried soil, a rigorous climate and a savage wil
derness, for the sake of reconciling their sense of reli
gious duty with their affections for their country, few,
perhaps none of them, formed a conception of what

PLYMOUTH, DECEMBER 22, 1802. 177

would be, within two centuries, the result of their un
dertaking. When the jealous and niggardly policy of
their British sovereign, denied* them even that hum
blest of requests, and instead of liberty, would barely
consent to promise connivance, neither he nor they
might be aware that they were laying the foundations
of a power, and that he was sowing the seeds of a
spirit, which, in less than two hundred years, would
stagger the throne of his descendants, and shake his
united kingdoms to the centre. So far is it from the
ordinary habits of mankind, to calculate the importance
of events in their elementary principles, that had the
first colonists of our country ever intimated as a part
of their designs, the project of founding a great and
mighty nation, the finger of scorn would have pointed
them to the cells of bedlam, as an abode more suita
ble for hatching vain empires than the solitude of a
transatlantic desert.

These consequences, then so little foreseen, have
unfolded themselves in all their grandeur, to the eyes
of the present age. It is a common amusement of
speculative minds, to contrast the magnitude of the
most important events with the minuteness of their
primeval causes, and the records of mankind are full
of examples for such contemplations. It is, however,
a more profitable employment to trace the constituent
principles of future greatness in their kernel ; to detect
in the acorn at our feet the germ of that majestic oak,
whose roots shoot down to the centre, and whose
branches aspire to the skies. Let it be then our pre
sent occupation to inquire and endeavor to ascertain
the causes first put in operation at the period of our
commemoration, and already productive of such mag
nificent effects ; to examine, with reiterated care and
minute attention, the characters of those men who
gave the first impulse to a new series of events in the
history of the world ; to applaud and emulate those
qualities of their minds which we shall find deserving
of our admiration ; to recognize, with candor, those

MR. ADAMS' ORATION, AT

features which forbid approbation or even require cen
sure, and finally, to lay alike their frailties and their
perfections to our own hearts, either as warning or as
example.

Of the various European settlements upon this con
tinent, which have finally merged in one independent
nation, the first establishments were made at various
times, by several nations, and under the influence of
different motives. In many instances, the conviction
of religious obligation formed one and a powerful in
ducement of the adventurers ; but in none, excepting
the settlement at Plymouth, did they constitute the
sole and exclusive actuating cause. Worldly interest
and commercial speculation entered largely into the
views of other settlers : but the commands of con
science were the only stimulus to the emigrants from
Leyden. Previous to their expedition hither, they had
endured a long banishment from their native country.
Under every species of discouragement, they under
took the voyage ; they performed it in spite of numer
ous and almost insuperable obstacles; they arrived
upon a wilderness bound with frost and hoary with
snow, without the boundaries of their charter; out
casts from all human society ; and coasted five weeks
together, in the dead of winter, on this tempestuous
shore, exposed at once to the fury of the elements, to
the arrows of the native savage, and to the impending
horrors of famine.

Courage and perseverance have a magical talis
man, before which difficulties disappear, and obstacles
vanish into air. These qualities have ever been dis
played in their mightiest perfection, as attendants in
the retinue of strong passions. From the first disco
very of the western hemisphere by Columbus, until the
settlement of Virginia, which immediately preceded
that of Plymouth, the various adventurers from the an
cient world had exhibited, upon innumerable occa
sions, that ardor of enterprize and that stubbornness of
pursuit, which set all danger at defiance, and chain the

PLYMOUTH, DECEMBER 22, 1802. 179

violence of nature at their feet. But they were all in
stigated by personal interests. Avarice and ambition
had tuned their souls to that pitch of exaltation.
Selfish passions were the parents of their heroism.
It was reserved for the first settlers of New England
to perform achievements equally arduous, to trample
down obstructions equally formidable, to dispel dan
gers, equally terrific, under the single inspiration of
conscience. To them, even liberty herself, was but
a subordinate and secondary consideration. They
claimed exemption from the mandates of human au
thority, as militating with their subjection to a superior
power. Before the voice of heaven they silenced
even the calls of their country.

Yet, while so deeply impressed with the sense of re
ligious obligation, they felt, in all its energy, the force
of that tender tie which binds the heart of every virtu
ous man to his native land. It was to renew that con
nexion with their country which had been severed by
their compulsory expatriation, that they resolved to
face all the hazards of a perilous navigation, and all
the labors of a toilsome distant settlement. Under the
mild protection of the Batavian government, they en
joyed already that freedom of religious worship, for
which they had resigned so many comforts and enjoy
ments at home : but their hearts panted for a restora
tion -to the bosom of their country. Invited and urged
by the openhearted and truly benevolent people, who
had given them an asylum from the persecution of
their own kindred, to form their settlement within the
territories then under their jurisdiction; the love of their
country predominated over every influence save that
of conscience alone, and they preferred the precari
ous chance of relaxation from the bigoted rigor of the
English government to the certain liberality and al
luring offers of the Hollanders. Observe, my country
men, the generous patriotism, the cordial union of
soul, the conscious, yet unaffected vigor, which beam
in their application to the British monarch. « They

180 MR. ADAMS' ORATION, AT

were well weaned from the delicate milk of their mo
ther country, and inured to the difficulties of a strange
land. They were knit together in a strict and sacred
bond, to take care of the good of each other and of
the whole. It was not with them as with other men,
whom small things could discourage, or small discon
tents cause to wish themselves again at home." Chil
dren of these exalted Pilgrims ! Is there one among
you, who can hear the simple and pathetic energy of
these expressions without tenderness and admiration ?
Venerated shades of our forefathers ! No ! ye were,
indeed* not ordinary men ! That country which had
ejected you so cruelly from her bosom, you still delight
ed to contemplate in the character of an affectionate
and beloved mother. The sacred bond which knit
you together was indissoluble while you lived ; and
oh ! may it be to your descendants the example and
the pledge of harmony to the latest period of time !
The difficulties and dangers, which so often had de
feated attempts of similar establishments, were unable
to subdue souls tempered like yours. You heard the
rigid interdictions ; you saw the menacing forms of
toil and danger, forbidding your access to this land of
promise: but you heard without dismay; you saw
and disdained retreat. Firm and undaunted in the
confidence of that sacred bond ; conscious of the pu
rity, and convinced of the importance of your motives,
you put jour trust in the protecting shield of Provi
dence, and smiled defiance at the combining terrors
of human malice and of elemental strife. These, in
the accomplishment of your undertaking, you were
summoned to encounter in their most hideous forms :
these you met with that fortitude, and combatted with
that perseverance which you had promised in their an
ticipation : these you completely vanquished in esta
blishing the foundations of New England, and the day
which we now commemorate is the perpetual memori
al of your triumph.
It were an occupation, peculiarly pleasing, to cull

PLYMOUTH, DECEMBER 22, 1802. 181

from our early historians, and exhibit before you, eve
ry detail of this transaction. To carry you in imagi
nation on board their bark at the first moment of her
arrival in the bay ; to accompany Carver, Winslow*
Bradford and Standish, in all their excursions upon the
desolate coast ; to follow them into every rivulet and
creek where they endeavored to find a firm footing,
and to fix, with a pause of delight and exultation, the
instant when the first of these heroic adventurers
alighted on the spot where you, their descendants, now
enjoy the glorious and happy reward of their labors.
But in this grateful task, your former orators, on this
anniversary, have anticipated all that the most ardent
industry could collect, and gratified all that the most
inquisitive curiosity could desire. To you, my friends,
every occurrence of that momentous period is already
familiar. A transient allusion to a few characteristic
incidents, which mark the peculiar history of the Ply
mouth settlers, may properly supply the place of a nar
rative, which, to this auditory, must be superfluous.

One of these remarkable incidents is the execution
of that instrument of government by which they formed
themselves into a body-politic, the day after their arri*
val upon the coast, and previous to their first landing.
This is, perhaps, the only instance, in human history,
of that positive, original social compact, which specu
lative philosophers have imagined as the only legiti
mate source of government. Here was a unanimous
and personal assent, by^all the individuals of the commu
nity, to the association by which they became a nation.
It was the result of circumstances and discussions,
which had occurred during their passage from Europe,
and is a full demonstration that the nature of civil gov
ernment, abstracted from the political institutions of
their native country, had been an object of their serious
meditation. The settlers of all the former European
colonies had contented themselves with the powers
conferred upon them by their respective charters,
without looking beyond the seal of the royal parch-

VOL. v. 24

182 MR- ADAMS' ORATION, AT

ment for the measure of their rights, and the rule of
their duties. The founders of Plymouth had been im
pelled by the peculiarities of their situation to examine
the subject with deeper and more comprehensive re
search. After twelve years of banishment from the land
of their first allegiance, during which they had been
under an adoptive and temporary subjection to another
sovereign, they must naturally have been led to reflect
upon the relative rights and duties of allegiance and
subjection. They had resided in a city, the seat of
a university, where the polemical and political contro
versies of the time were pursued with uncommon fer
vor. In this period they had witnessed the deadly
struggle between the two parties, into which the peo
ple of the United Provinces, after their separation
from the crown of Spain, had divided themselves. The
contest embraced within its compass not only theologi
cal doctrines, but political principles, and Maurice
and Barnevelt were the temporal leaders of the same
rival factions, of which Episcopius and Polyander.
Were the ecclesiastical champions. That the investi
gation of the fundamental principles of government
was deeply implicated in these dissensions is evident
from the immortal work of Grotius, upon the rights of
war and peace, which undoubtedly originated from
them. Grotius himself had been a most distinguish
ed actor and sufferer in those important scenes of in
ternal convulsion, and his work was first published*
very shortly after the departure of our forefathers from
Leyden. It is well known, that in the course of the
contest, Mr. Robinson more than once appeared, with
credit to himself as a public disputant against Episco-

Eius ; and from the manner in which the fact is related
y Governor Bradford, it is apparent that the whole
English church at Leyden took a zealous interest in the
religious part of the controversy. As strangers in the
land, it is presumable that they wisely and honorably

* In 1625.

PLYMOUTH, DECEMBER 22, 1802. J83

avoided entangling themselves in the political conten
tions involved with it. Yet the theoretic principles, as
they were drawn into discussion, could not fail to ar
rest their attention, and must have assisted them to
form accurate ideas concerning the origin and extent
of authority among men, independent of positive insti
tutions. The importance of these circumstances will
not be duly weighed without taking into considera
tion the state of opinions then prevalent in England.
The general principles of government were there little
understood and less examined. The whole substance
of human authority was centred in the simple doc
trine of royal prerogative, the origin of which was
always traced in theory to divine institution. Twenty
years later, the subject was more industriously sifted,
and for half a century became one of the principal to
pics of controversy between the ablest and most en
lightened men in the nation. The instrument of vo
luntary association, executed on board the Mayflower,
testifies that the parties to it had anticipated the im
provement of their nation.

Another incident, from which we may derive occa
sion for important reflections, was the attempt of these
original settlers to establish among them that com
munity of goods and of labor, which fanciful politi
cians, from the days of Plato to those of Rousseau,
have recommended as the fundamental law of a per
fect republic. This theory results, it must be acknow
ledged, from principles of reasoning, most flattering
to the human character. If industry, frugality and
disinterested integrity, were alike the virtues of all,
there would, apparently, be more of the social spirit,
in making all property a common stock, and giving
to each individual a proportional title to the wealth of
the whole. Such is the basis upon which Plato for
bids, in his republic, the division of property. Such
is the system upon which Rousseau pronounces the
first man, who enclosed a field with a fence and said,
this is mine, a traitor to the human species. A wiser

MR. ADAMS' ORATION, AT

and more useful philosophy, however, directs us to
consider man according to the nature in which he was
formed; subject to infirmities, which no wisdom can
remedy ; to weaknesses, which no institution can
strengthen ; to vices, which no legislation can cor
rect. Hence it becomes obvious, that separate pro
perty is the natural and indisputable right of separate
exertion ; that community of goods without community
of toil is oppressive and unjust ; that it counteracts
the laws of nature, which prescribe, that he only who
sows the seed shall reap the harvest ; that it discour
ages all energy, by destroying its rewards ; and makes
the most virtuous and active members of society, the
slaves and drudges of the worst. Such was the issue
of this experiment among our forefathers, and the same
event demonstrated the error of the system in the elder
settlement of Virginia. Let us cherish that spirit of
harmony, which prompted our forefathers to make the
attempt, under circumstances more favorable to its
success than, perhaps, ever occurred upon earth. Let
us no less admire the candor with which they relin
quished it, upon discovering its irremediable ineffica-
cy. To found principles of government upon too ad
vantageous an estimate of the. human character, is an
error of inexperience, the source of which is so amia
ble, that it is impossible to censure it with severity.
We have seen the same mistake, committed in our
own age, and upon a larger theatre. Happily for our
ancestors, their situation allowed them to repair it.
before its effects had proved destructive. They had:
no pride of vain philosophy to support, no perfidious
rage of faction to glut, by persevering in their mis
takes, until they should be extinguished in torrents of
blood.

As the attempt to establish among themselves the
community of goods was a seal of that sacred bond
which knit them so closely together, so the conduct,
they observed towards the natives of the country, dis
plays their steadfast adherence to the rules of justice.

PLYMOUTH, DECEMBER 32, 1802. 185

and their faithful attachment to those of benevolence
and charity.

No European settlement, ever formed upon this con
tinent, has been more distinguished for undeviating
kindness and equity towards the savages. There are,
indeed, moralists who have questioned the right of the
Europeans to intrude upon the possessions of the abo
riginals in any case, and under any limitations what
soever. But have they maturely considered the whole
subject ? The Indian right of possession itself stands,
with regard to the greatest part of the country, upon
a questionable foundation. Their cultivated fields;
their constructed habitations ; a space of ample suf
ficiency for their subsistence, and whatever they had
annexed to themselves by personal labor, was un
doubtedly, by the laws of nature, theirs. But what is
the right of a huntsman to the forest of a thousand
miles over which he has accidentally ranged in quest
of prey ? Shall the liberal bounties of Providence to
the race of man be monopolized by one of ten th u-
sand for whom they were created ? Shall the exu
berant bosom of the common mother, amply adequate
to the nourishment of millions, be claimed exclusively
by a few hundreds of her offspring ? Shall the lordly
savage not only disdain the virtues and enjoyments of
civilization himself, but shall he control the civilization
of a world ? Shall he forbid the wilderness to blos
som like the rose ? Shall he forbid the oaks of the
forest to fall before the axe of industry, and rise again,
transformed into the habitations of ease and elegance ?
Shall he doom an immense region of the globe to per
petual desolation, and, to hear the bowlings of the
tiger and the wolf, silence forever the voice of human
gladness ? Shall the fields and the vallies, which a
beneficent God has formed to teem with the life of in
numerable multitudes, be condemned to everlasting
barrenness ? Shall the mighty rivers, poured out by
the hand of nature, as channels of communication be
tween numerous nations, roll their waters in sullen si"

MR. ADAMS' ORATION, AT

lence and eternal solitude to the deep ? Have hun
dreds of commodious harbors, a thousand leagues of
coast, and a boundless ocean, been spread in the front
of this land, and shall every purpose of utility, to which
they could apply, be prohibited by the tenant of the
woods ? No, generous philanthropists ! Heaven has
not been thus inconsistent in the works of its hands !
Heaven has not thus placed at irreconcileable strife,
its moral laws with its physical creation ! The Pil
grims of Plymouth obtained their right of possession
to the territory, on which they settled, by titles as
fair and unequivocal as any human property can be
held. By their voluntary association they recognized
their allegiance to the government of Britain, and in
process of time, received whatever powers and au
thorities could be conferred upon them by a charter
from their sovereign. The spot on which they fixed
had belonged to an Indian tribe, totally extirpated by
that devouring pestilence, which had swept the coun
try, shortly before their arrival. The territory, thus
free from all exclusive possession, they might have
taken by the natural right of occupancy. Desirous,
however, of giving ample satisfaction to every pre
tence of prior right, by formal and solemn conventions
with the chiefs of the neighboring tribes, they acquir
ed the further security of a purchase. At their hands
the children of the desert had no cause of complaint
On the great day of retribution, what thousands, what
millions of the American race will appear at the bar of
judgment to arraign their European, invading con
querors ! Let us humbly hope, that the fathers of the
Plymouth Colony will then appear in the whiteness of
innocence. Let us indulge the belief, that they will
not only be free from all accusation of injustice to
these unfortunate sons of nature, but that the testimo
nials of their acts of kindness and benevolence to
wards them, will plead the cause of their virtues, as
they are now authenticated by the records of history
upon earth.

PLYMOUTH, DECEMBER 22, 1802. 187

Religious discord has lost her sting; the cumbrous
weapons of theological warfare are antiquated: the
field* of politics supplies the alchymists of our times,
with materials of more fatal explosion, and the butch
ers of mankind no longer travel to another world for
instruments of cruelty and destruction. Our age is too
enlightened to contend upon topics, which concern
only the interests of eternity ; and men who hold in
proper contempt all controversies about trifles, except
such as inflame their own passions, have made it a
common-place censure against your ancestors, that
their zeal was enkindled by subjects of trivial impor
tance ; and that however aggrieved by the intolerance
of others, they were alike intolerant themselves.
Against these objections, your candid judgment will
not require an unqualified justification ; but your re
spect and gratitude for the founders of the state may
boldly claim an ample apology. The original grounds
of their separation from the church of England, were
not objects of a magnitude to dissolve the bonds of
communion; much less those of charity, between
Christian brethren of the same essential principles.
Some of them, however, were not inconsiderable, and
numerous inducements concurred to give them an ex
traordinary interest in their eyes. When that porten
tous system of abuses, the Papal dominion, was over
turned, a great variety of religious sects arose in its
stead, in the several countries, which for many centu
ries before had been screwed beneath its subjection.
The fabric of the reformation, first undertaken in Eng
land upon a contracted basis, by a capricious and san
guinary tyrant, had been successively overthrown and
restored, renewed and altered according to the vary
ing humors and principles of four successive monarchs.
To ascertain the precise point of division between the
genuine institutions of Christianity, and the corrup
tions accumulated upon them in the progress of fif
teen centuries, was found a task of extreme difficulty
throughout the Christian world. Men of the profound-

188 MR. ADAMS' ORATION, AT

est learning, of the sublimest genius, and of the pui'esi
integrity, after devoting their lives to the research,
finally differed in their ideas upon many great points,
both of doctrine and discipline. The main question,
it was admitted on all hands, most intimately concern
ed the highest interests of man, both temporal and
eternal. Can we wonder, that men who felt their hap
piness here and their hopes of hereafter, their worldly
welfare and the kingdom of heaven at stake, should
sometimes attach an importance beyond their intrinsic
weight to collateral points of controversy, connected
with the all-involving object of the reformation ? The
changes in the forms and principles of religious wor
ship, were introduced and regulated in England by the
hand of public authority. But that hand had not been
uniform or steady in its operations. During the perse
cutions inflicted in the interval of Popish restoration
under the reign of Mary, upon all who favored the re
formation, many of the most zealous reformers had
been compelled to fly their country. While residing
on the continent of Europe, they had adopted the prin
ciples of the most complete and rigorous reformation,
as taught and established by Calvin. On returning
afterwards to their native country, they were dissatis
fied with the partial reformation, at which, as they
conceived, the English establishment had rested, and
claiming the privileges of private conscience, upon
which alone, any departure from the church of Rome
could be justified, they insisted upon the right of ad
hering to the system of their own preference, and of
course, upon that of non-conformity to the establish
ment prescribed by the royal authority. The only
means used to convince them of error, and reclaim
them from dissent, was force, and force served but to
confirm the opposition, it was meant to suppress. By
driving the founders of the Plymouth Colony into exile,
it constrained them to absolute separation from the
church of England, and by the refusal afterwards to
allow them a positive toleration, even in this American

PLYMOUTH, DECEMBER 22, 1802. 189

wilderness, the council of James the First, rendered that
separation irreconcileable. Viewing their religious
liberties here, as held only upon sufferance, yet bound
to them by all the ties of conviction, and by all their
sufferings for them, could they forbear to look upon
every dissenter among themselves with a jealous eye ?
Wittyn two years after their landing, they beheld a
rival settlement* attempted in their immediate neigh
borhood; and not long after, the laws of self-preserva
tion compelled them to break up a nest of revellers,t
who boasted of protection from the mother country,
and who had recurred to the easy, but pernicious re
source of feeding their wanton idleness, by furnishing
the savages with the means, the skill and the instru
ments of European destruction. Toleration, in that
instance, would have been self-murder and many other
examples might be alleged, in which their necessary
measures of self-defence have been exaggerated into
cruelty, and their most indispensable precautions dis
torted into persecution. Yet shall we not pretend that
they were exempt from the common laws of mortality,
or entirely free from all the errors of their age. Their
zeal might sometimes be too ardent, but it was al
ways sincere. At this day, religious indulgence is one
of our clearest duties, because it is one of our undis
puted rights. While we rejoice that the principles of
genuine Christianity have so far triumphed over the
prejudices of a former generation, let us fervently hope
for the day when it wijl prove equally victorious over
the malignant passions of our own.

In thus calling your attention to some of the peculiar
features in the principles, the character, and the history
of your forefathers, it is as wide from my design, as I
know it would be from your approbation, to adorn
their memory with a chaplet plucked from the domain
of others. The occasion and the day are more pecu-

'* Weston's plantation at Wessagussett.

t Morton, and his party at Mount Wollaston.

VOL. v. 25

J90 MR. ADAMS' ORATION, &c.

liarly devoted to them, but let it never be dishonored
with a contracted and exclusive spirit. Our affections
as citizens embrace the whole extent of the union, and
the names of Raleigh, Smith, Winthrop, Calvert, Penn
and Oglethorpe, excite in our minds recollections
equally pleasing, and gratitude equally fervent with
those of Carver and Bradford. Two centuries have
not yet elapsed since the first European foot touched
the soil which now constitutes the American union.
Two centuries more and our numbers must exceed
those of Europe herself. The destinies of this em
pire, as they appear in prospect before us, disdain the
powers of human calculation. Yet, as the original
founder of the Roman state is said once to have lifted
upon his shoulders the fame and fortunes of all his
posterity, so let us never forget that the glory and
greatness of all our descendants is in our hands. Pre
serve, in all their purity, refine, if possible, from all their
alloy, those virtues which we this day commemorate
as the ornament of our forefathers. Adhere to them
with inflexible resolution, as to the horns of the altar ;
instill them with unwearied perseverance into the
minds of your children ; bind your souls and theirs to
the national union as the chords of life are centred in
the heart, and you shall soar with rapid and steady-
wing to the summit of human glory. Nearly a century
ago, one of those rare minds* to whom it is given to
discern future greatness in its seminal principles, upon
contemplating the situation of this continent, pronounc
ed in a vein of poetic inspiration,

' Westward the Star of empire takes its way."

Let us all unite in ardent supplications to the Founder
of nations and the Builder of worlds, that what then
was prophecy, may continue unfolding into history —
that the dearest hopes of the human race may not be
extinguished in disappointment, and that the last may
prove the noblest empire of time.

* Bishop Berkeley.

EULOGY ON ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

PRONOUNCED AT THE REQUEST OP THE CITIZENS OP BOS
TON, JULY 26, 1804,

BY HARRISON G..OTIS.

WE are convened, afflicted fellow-citizens, to per
form the only duties which our republics acknowledge
or fulfil to their illustrious dead ; to present to de
parted excellence an oblation of gratitude and respect ;
to inscribe its virtues on the urn which contains its
ashes, and to consecrate its example by the tears and
sympathy of an affectionate people.

Must we, then, realize that Hamilton is no more !
Must the sod, not yet cemented on the tomb of Wash
ington, still moist with our tears, be so soon disturbed
to admit the beloved companion of Washington, the
partner of his dangers, the object of his confidence,
the disciple who leaned upon his bosom ! Insatiable
Death ! Will not the heroes and statesmen, whom mad
ambition has sent from the crimsoned fields of Europe,
suffice to people thy dreary dominions ! Thy dismal
avenues have been thronged with princely martyrs and
illustrious victims. Crowns and sceptres, the spoils
of royalty, are among thy recent trophies, and the blood
of innocence and valor has flowed in torrents at thy
inexorable command. Such have been thy ravages in
the old world. And in our infant country how small
was the remnant of our revolutionary heroes which
had been spared from thy fatal grasp ! Could not our
Warren, our Montgomery, our Mercer, our Greene,
our Washington appease thy vengeance for a few
short years ! Shall none of our early patriots be per
mitted to behold the perfection of their own work in

192 am. OTIS'

the stability of our government and the maturity of our
institutions ! Or hast thou predetermined, dread King
of Terrors ! to blast the world's best hope, and by de
priving us of all the conductors of our glorious revo
lution, compel us to bury our liberties in their tombs !
O Hamilton ! great would be the relief of my mind,
were I permitted to exchange the arduous duty of at
tempting to portray tjie varied excellence of thy cha
racter, for the privilege of venting the deep and un
availing sorrow which swells my bosom, at the remem
brance of the gentleness of thy nature, of thy splen
did talents and placid virtues ! But, my respected
friends, an indulgence of these feelings would be in
consistent with that deliberate recital of the services
and qualities of this great man, which is required by
impartial justice and your expectations.

In governments which recognize the distinctions of
splendid birth and titles, the details of illustrious line
age and connexions, become interesting to those who
are accustomed to value those advantages. But in
the man whose loss we deplore, the interval between
manhood and death was so uniformly filled by a dis
play of the energies of his mighty mind, that the world
has scarcely paused to inquire into the story of his in
fant or puerile years. He was a planet, the dawn of
which was not perceived ; which rose with full splen
dor, and emitted a constant stream of glorious light
until the hour of its sudden and portentous eclipse.

At the age of eighteen, while cultivating his mind
at Columbia College, he was roused from the leisure
and delights of scientific groves by the din of war.
He entered the American army as an officer of artil
lery, and at that early period familiarized himself to
wield both his sword and his pen in the service of his
country. He developed at once the qualities which
command precedency, and the modesty which con
ceals its pretensions. Frank, affable, intelligent and
brave, young Hamilton became the favorite of his
fellow-soldiers. His intuitive perception and cor-

ON HAMILTON. 193

reel judgment rendered him a rapid proficient in mili
tary science, and his merit silenced the envy which it
excited.

A most honorable distinction now awaited him.
He attracted the attention of the commander-in-chief,
who appointed him an aid, and honored him with his
confidence and friendship. This domestic relation
afforded to both, frequent means of comparing their
opinions upon the policy and destinies of our country,
upon the sources of its future prosperity and grandeur,
upon the imperfection of its existing establishments ;
and to digest those principles, which, in happier times,
might be interwoven into a more perfect model of gov
ernment. Hence, probably, originated that filial vene
ration for Washington and adherence to his maxims,
which were ever conspicuous in the deportment of
Hamilton ; and hence the exalted esteem and predi
lection uniformly displayed by the magnanimous patron
to the faithful and affectionate pupil.

While the disasters of the American army, and the
perseverance of the British ministry, presented the
gloomy prospect of protracted warfare, young Hamil
ton appeared to be content in his station, arid with the
opportunities which he had of fighting by the side, and
executing the orders of his beloved chief. But the in
vestment of the army of Cornwallis suddenly changed
the aspect of affairs, and rendered it probable, that
this campaign, if successful, would be the most brilliant
and decisive of any that was likely to occur. It now
appeared, that his heart had long panted for an occa
sion to signalize his intrepidity and devotion to the
service of his country. He obtained, by earnest en
treaties, the command of a detachment destined to
storm the- works of Yorktown. It is well known with
what undaunted courage he pressed on to the assault,
with unloaded arms, presented his bosom to the dan
gers of the bayonet, carried the fort, and thus eminent
ly contributed to decide the fate of the battle and of
his country. But even here the impetuosity of the

194 MR. OTIS' EULOGY

youthful conqueror was restrained by the clemency of
the benevolent man: the butchery of the American
garrison, at New London, would have justified and
seemed to demand an exercise of the rigors of retalia
tion. This was strongly intimated to colonel Hamil
ton, but we find, in his report to his commanding of
ficer, in his own words, that, " incapable of imitating
examples of barbarity, and forgetting recent provoca
tions, he spared every man who ceased to resist."

Having, soon afterwards, terminated his military ca
reer, he returned to New York, and qualified himself to
commence practice as a counsellor at law. But the
duties and emoluments of his profession were not then
permitted to stifle his solicitude to give a correct tone
to public opinion, by the propagation of principles
worthy of adoption by a people who had just under
taken to govern themselves. He found the minds of
men chafed and irritated by the recollection of their
recent sufferings and dangers. The city of New
York, so long a garrison, presented scenes and in
cidents, which naturally aggravated these dispositions,
and too many were inclined to fan the flame of dis
cord, and mar the enjoyment and advantages of peace,
by fomenting the animosities engendered by the col
lisions of war. To sooth these angry passions; to
heal these wounds ; to demonstrate the folly and in
expediency of scattering the bitter tares of nation
al prejudice and private rancor among the seeds
of public prosperity, were objects worthy of the
heart and head of Hamilton. To these he applied
himself, and by a luminous pamphlet, assuaged the
public resentment against those, whose sentiments
had led them to oppose the revolution ; and thus pre
served from exile many valuable citizens, who have
supported the laws and increased the opulence of their
native state.

From this period, he appears to have devoted him
self principally to professional occupations, which were
multiplied by his increasing celebrity, until he became

ON HAMILTON. 195

a member of the convention, which met at Annapolis,
merely for the purpose of devising a mode of levying
and collecting a general impost. Although the object
of this convention was thus limited, yet so manifold, in
his view, were the defects of the old confederation,
that a reform, in one particular, would be ineffectual ;
he, therefore, first suggested the proposal of attempt
ing a radical change in its principles ; and the address
to the people of the United States, recommending a
general convention, with more extensive powers,
which was adopted by that assembly, was the work of
his pen.*

To the second convention, which framed the con
stitution, he was also deputed as a delegate from the
state of New York.

In that assemblage of the brightest jewels of Ameri
ca, the genius of Hamilton sparkled with pre-eminent
lustre. The best of our orators were improved by the
example of his eloquence. The most experienced of
our statesmen were instructed by the solidity of his
sentiments, and all were convinced of the utility and
extent of his agency in framing the constitution.

When the instrument was presented to the people
for their ratification, the obstacles incident to every
attempt to combine the interests, views and opinions
of the various states, threatened, in some of them,
to frustrate the hopes and exertions of its friends.
The fears of the timid, the jealousies of the ignorant,
the arts of the designing, and the sincere conviction
of the superficial, were arrayed into a formidable al
liance, in opposition to the system. But the magic
pen of Hamilton dissolved this league. Animated by
the magnitude of his object, he enriched the daily pa
pers with the researches of a mind teeming with po
litical information. In these rapid essays, written
amid the avocations of business, and under the pres-

* This information is derived from a respectable member o£ that,
convention, from the state of New York.

jgg MR. OTIS' EULOGY

sure of the occasion, it would be natural to expect, that
much would require revision and correction. But in
the mind of Hamilton nothing was superficial but re
sentment of injuries ; nothing fugitive, but those tran
sient emotions which sometimes lead virtue astray.
These productions of his pen are now considered as
a standard commentary upon the nature of our gov
ernment ; and he lived to hear them quoted by his
friends and adversaries, as high authority, in the tribu
nals of justice, and in the legislature of the nation.

When the Constitution was adopted, and Washing
ton was called to the Presidency by his grateful coun
try, our departed friend was appointed to the charge of
the treasury department, and of consequence became
a confidential member of the administration. In this
new sphere of action, he displayed a ductility and ex
tent of genius, a fertility in expedients, a faculty of ar
rangement, an industry in application to business, and
a promptitude in despatch ; but beyond all, a purity of
public virtue and disinterestedness, which are too
mighty for the grasp of my feeble powers of descrip
tion. Indeed, the public character of Hamilton, and
his measures from this period, are so intimately con
nected with the history of our country, that it is impos
sible to do justice to one without devoting a volume to
the other. The treasury of the United States, at the
time of his entrance upon the duties of his office, was
literally a creature of the imagination, and existed only
in name, unless folios of unsettled balances, and bun
dles of reproachful claims were deserving the name of
a treasury. Money there was none ; and of public
credit scarcely a shadow remained. No national sys
tem for raising and collecting a revenue had been at
tempted, and no estimate could be formed, from the
experiments of the different states, of the probable re
sult of any project of deriving it from commerce. The
national debt was not only unpaid, but its amount was
a subject of uncertainty and conjecture. Such was the
chaos from which the secretary was called upon to elicit

ON HAMILTON. 197 .

ii

the elements of a regular system, adequate to the im
mediate exigencies of a new and expensive establish
ment, and to an honorable provision for the public debt.
His arduous duty was not to reform abuses, but to
create resources ; not to improve upon precedent, but
to invent a model. In an ocean of experiment, he had
neither chart nor compass but those of his own inven
tion. Yet such was the comprehensive vigor of his
mind, that his original projects possessed the hardihood
of settled regulations. His sketches were little short
of the perfection of finished pictures. In the first ses
sion of Congress, he produced a plan for the organiza
tion of the treasury department, and for the collection
of a national revenue ; and in the second, a report of a
system for funding the national debt. Great objec
tions were urged against the expediency of the princi
ples, assumed by him for the basis of his system ; but.
no doubt remained of their eifect. A dormant capital
was revived, and with it commerce and agriculture
awoke as from the sleep of death. By the enchant
ment of this " mighty magician," the beauteous fabric
of public credit rose in full majesty upon the ruins of
the old confederation ; and men gazed with astonish
ment upon a youthful prodigy, who, at the age of thirty-
three, having already been the ornament of the camp,
the forum and the senate, was now suddenly transform
ed into an accomplished financier, and a self-taught
adept, not only in the general principles, but the intri
cate details, of his new department.

It is not wonderful that such resplendent powers of
doing right should have exposed him to the suspicion
of doing wrong. He was suspected and accused.
His political adversaries were his judges. Their in
vestigation of his conduct and honorable acquittal add
ed new lustre to his fame, and confirmed the national
sentiment, that in his public character he was, indeed,
t; a man without fear and without reproach."

To his exertions in this department, we are indebted
for many important institutions. Among others, thf>

VOT-. v. 26

MR. OTIS' EULOGY

plan of redeeming the public debt, and of a national
bank to facilitate the operations of government, were
matured and adopted under his auspices ; and so com
plete were his arrangements, that his successors,
though men of undoubted talents, and one of them a
political opponent, have found nothing susceptible of
material improvement.

But the obligations of his country, during this period,
were not confined to his merit as a financier.

The flame of insurrection was kindled in the western
counties of Pennsylvania, and raged with such vio
lence, that large detachments of military force were
marched to the scene of the disturbance, and the pre
sence of the great Washington was judged necessary to
quell the increasing spirit of revolt. He ordered the
secretary to quit the duties of his department, and at
tend him on the expedition. His versatile powers were
immediately and efficaciously applied to restore the
authority of the laws. The principal burden of the
important civil and military arrangements, requisite
for this purpose, devolved upon his shoulders. It
was owing to his humanity, that the leaders of this
rebellion escaped exemplary punishment: and the suc
cessful issue was, in public and unqualified terms, as
cribed to him by those, whose political relations would
not have prompted them to pay him the homage of
unmerited praise.

He was highly instrumental in preserving our peace
and neutrality, and saving us from the ruin which has
befallen the republics of the old world. Upon this
topic, I am desirous of avoiding every intimation which
might prove offensive to individuals of any party. God
forbid that the sacred sorrow, in which we all unite,
should be disturbed by the mixture of any unkindly
emotions ! I would merely do justice to this honored
shade, without arraigning the motives of those who
disapproved and opposed his measures.

The dangers, which menaced our infant government
at the commencement of the French revolution, are no

ON HAMILTON. 199

longer a subject of controversy. The principles, pro
fessed by the first leaders of that revolution, were so
congenial to those of the American people; their pre
tences of aiming merely at the reformation of abuses
were so plausible ; the spectacle of a great people
struggling to recover their "long lost liberties" was so
imposing and august ; while that of a combination of
tyrants to conquer and subjugate, was so revolting;
the services, received from one of the belligerent pow
ers, and the injuries inflicted by the other, were so re
cent in our minds, that the sensibility of the nation was
excited to the most exquisite pitch. To this disposition,
so favorable to the wishes of France, every appeal was
made, which intrigue, corruption, flattery and threats
could dictate. At this dangerous and dazzling crisis,
there were but few men entirely exempt from the general
delirium. Among that few was Hamilton. His pene
trating eye discerned, and his prophetic voice foretold,
the tendency and consequence of the first revolutiona
ry movements. He was assured, that every people
which should espouse the cause of France would pass
under her yoke, and that the people of France, like
every nation which surrenders its reason to the mercy
of demagogues, would be driven by the storms of anar
chy upon the shores of despotism. All this he knew
was conformable to the invariable law of nature and
experience of mankind. } From the reach of this deso
lation he was anxious to save his country, and in the
pursuit of his purpose, he breasted the assaults of ca
lumny and prejudice. " The torrent roared, and he
did buffit it." Appreciating the advantages of a neu
tral position, he co-operated with Washington, Adams,
and the other patriots of that day, in the means best
adapted to maintain it. The rights and duties of neu
trality, proclaimed by the President, were explained
and enforced by Hamilton in the character of Pacifi-
cus. The attempts to corrupt and intimidate were re
sisted. The British treaty was justified and defended
as an honorable compact with our natural friends, and

200 MR- OTIS' EULOGY

pregnant with advantages, which have since been real
ized and acknowledged by its opponents.

By this pacific and vigorous policy, in the whole
course of which the genius and activity of Hamilton
were conspicuous, time and information were afforded
to the American nation, and correct views were ac
quired of our situation and interests. We beheld the
republics of Europe march in procession to the fune
ral of their own liberties, by the lurid light of the revo
lutionary torch. The tumult of the passions subsided,
the wisdom of the administration was perceived, and
America now remains a solitary monument in the de
solated plains of liberty.

Having remained at the head of the treasury seve
ral years, and filled its coffers ; having developed the
sources of an ample revenue, and tested the advan
tages of his own system by his own experience ; and
having expended his private fortune; he found it ne
cessary to retire from public employment, arid to de
vote his attention to the claims of a large and dear
family. What brighter instance of disinterested ho
nor has ever been exhibited to an admiring world !
That a man, upon whom devolved the task of originat
ing a system of revenue for a nation ; of devising the
checks in his own department ; of providing for the
collection of sums, the amount of which was conjec
tural ; that a man, who anticipated the effects of a
funding system, yet a secret in his own bosom, and
who was thus enabled to have secured a princely for
tune, consistently with principles esteemed fair by the
world ; that such a man, by no means addicted to an
expensive or extravagant style of living, should have
retired from office destitute of means adequate to the
wants of mediocrity, and have resorted to profession
al labor for the means of decent support, are facts
which must instruct and astonish those, who, in coun
tries habituated to corruption and venality, are more
attentive to the gains than to the duties of official sta
tion. Yet Hamilton was that man. It was a factr al-

ON HAMILTON. 201

ways known to his friends, and it is now evident from
his testament, made under a deep presentiment of his
approaching fate. Blush, then, ministers and warriors
of imperial France, who have deluded your nation by
pretensions to a disinterested regard for its liberties
and rights ! Disgorge the riches extorted from your
fellow-citizens, and the spoils amassed from confisca
tion and blood ! Restore to impoverished nations the
price paid by them for the privilege of slavery, and
now appropriated to the refinements of luxury and cor
ruption ! Approach the tomb of Hamilton, and com
pare the insignificance of your gorgeous palaces with
the awful majesty of this tenement of clay !

We again accompany our friend in the walks of pri
vate life, and in the assiduous pursuit of his profession,
until the aggressions of France compelled the nation
to assume the attitude of defence. He was now invit
ed by the great and enlightened statesman, who had
succeeded to the presidency, and at the express request
of the commander-in-chief, to accept of the second
rank in the army. Though no man had manifested a
greater desire to avoid war, yet it is freely confessed,
that when war appeared to be inevitable, his heart ex
ulted in " the tented field," and he loved the life and
occupation of a soldier. His early habits were form
ed amid the fascinations of the camp. And though
the pacific policy of Adams once more rescued us from
war, and shortened the existence of the army esta
blishment, yet its duration was sufficient to secure to
him the love and confidence of officers and men, to
enable him to display the talents and qualities of a
great general, and to justify the most favorable prog
nostics of his prowess in the field.

Once more this excellent man unloosed the helmet
from his brow, and returned to the duties of the fo
rum. From this time he persisted in a firm resolution
to decline all civil honors and promotion, and to live a
private citizen, unless again summoned to the defence
of his country. He became more than ever assiduous

202 MR. OTIS' EULOGY

in his practice at the bar, and intent upon his plans of
domestic happiness, until a nice and mistaken estimate
of the claims of honor, impelled him to the fatal act
which terminated his life.

While it is far from my intention to draw a veil over
this last great error, or in the least measure to justify a
practice, which threatens in its progress to destroy
the liberty of speech and of opinion; it is but justice
to the deceased, to state the circumstances which
should palliate the resentment that may be excited in
some good minds towards his memory. From the
last sad memorial which we possess from his hand,
and in which, if our tears permit, we may trace the
sad presage of the impending catastrophe, it appears
that his religious principles were at variance with the
practice of duelling, and that he could not reconcile
his benevolent heart to shed the blood of an adversary
in private combat, even in his own defence. It was,
then, from public motives that he committed this great
mistake. It was for the benefit of his country, that he
erroneously conceived himself obliged to make the
painful sacrifice of his principles, and to expose his
life. The sober judgment of the man, was confounded
and misdirected by the jealous honor of the soldier ;
and he evidently adverted to the possibility of events
that might render indispensable, the esteem and con
fidence of soldiers as well as of citizens.

But while religion mourns for this aberration of the
judgment of a great man, she derives some consolation
from his testimony in her favor. If she rejects the
apology, she admits the repentance; and if the good
example be not an atonement, it may be an antidote
for the bad. Let us, then, in an age of infidelity, join,
in imagination, the desolate group of wife and children
and friends, who surround the dying bed of the inqui
sitive, the luminous, the scientific Hamilton, and wit
ness his attestation to the truth and comforts of our
holy religion. Let us behold the lofty warrior bow his
head before the cross of the meek and lowly Jesus ;

ON HAMILTON. 203

and he who had so lately graced the sumptuous tables
and society of the luxurious and rich, now. regardless
of these meaner pleasures, and aspiring to be admitted
to a sublime enjoyment with which no worldly joys
can compare ; to a devout and humble participation
of the bread of life. The religious fervor of his last
moments was not an impulse of decaying nature yield
ing to its fears, but the result of a firm conviction of
the truths of the gospel. I am well informed, that in
early life, the evidences of the Christian religion had
attracted his serious examination, and obtained his
deliberate assent to their truth, and that he daily, upon
his knees, devoted a portion of time to a compliance
with one of its most important injunctions : arid that,
however these edifying propensities might have yield
ed occasionally to the business and temptations of life,
they always resumed their influence, and would proba
bly have prompted him to a public profession of his
faith in his Redeemer.

Such was the untimely fate of Alexander Hamilton,
whose character warrants the apprehension, that
ife take him for all in all, we ne'er shall look upon his
like again."

Nature, even in the partial distribution of her fa
vors, generally limits^ the attainments of great men
within distinct and particular spheres of eminence.
But he was the darling of nature, and privileged be
yond the rest of her favorites. His mind caught, at a
glance, that perfect comprehension of a subject, for
which others are indebted to patient labor arid investi
gation. In whatever department he was called to
act, he discovered an intuitive knowledge of its duties,
which gave him an immediate ascendency over those
who had made them the study of their lives ; so that,
after running through the circle of office, as a soldier,
statesman and financier, no question remained for
which he had been qualified, but only in which he had
evinced the most superlative merit. He did not dis
semble his attachment to a military life, nor his con-

204 MR. OTIS' EULOGY

sciousness of possessing talents for command ; yet no
man more strenuously advocated the rights of the
civil over the military power, nor more cheerfully ab
dicated command and returned to the rank of the citi
zen, when his country could dispense with the neces
sity of an army.

In his private profession, at a bar abounding with
men of learning and experience, he was without a rival.
He arranged, with the happiest facility, the materials
collected in the vast storehouse of his memory, sur
veyed his subject under all its aspects, and enforced
his arguments with such powers of reasoning, that
nothing was wanting to produce conviction, and ge
nerally to ensure success. His eloquence combined
the nervousness and copious elegance of the Greek
and Roman schools, and gave him the choice of his
clients and his business. These wonderful powers
were accompanied by a natural politeness and winning
condescension, which forestalled the envy of his
brethren. Their hearts were gained before their
pride was alarmed ; and they united in their approba
tion of a pre-eminence, which reflected honor on their
fraternity.

From such talents, adorned by incorruptible hones
ty and boundless generosity, an immense personal in
fluence over his political and private friends was in
separable ; and by those who did not know him, and
who saw the use to which ambition might apply it, he
was sometimes suspected of views unpropitious to the
nature of our government. The charge was incon
sistent with the exertions he had made, to render that
government, in its present form, worthy of the attach
ment and support of the people, and his voluntary re-
linquishment of the means of ambition, the purse-
strings of the nation. He was, indeed, ambitious, but
not of power ; he was ambitious only to convince the
world of the spotless integrity of his administration
and character. This was the key to the finest sensi
bilities of his heart. He shrunk from the imputation

ON WASHINGTON. ;>();>

of misconduct in public life: and if his judgment ever
misled him, it was only when warped by an excessive
eagerness to vindicate himself at the expense of his
discretion. To calumny, in every other shape, he op
posed the defence of dignified silence and contempt.

Had such a character been exempt from foibles and
frailties, it would not have been human. Yet so small
was the catalogue of these, that they would have es
caped observation, but for the unparalleled frankness
of his nature, which prompted him to confess them to
the world. He did not consider greatness as an au
thority for habitual vice ; and he repented, with such
contrition of casual error, that none remained oifend-
ed but those who never had a right to complain. The
virtues of his private and domestic character compris
ed whatever conciliates affection and begets respect.
To envy he was a stranger, and of merit and talents
the unaffected eulogist and admirer. The charms of
his conversation, the brilliance of his wit, his regard to
decorum, his ineffable good humor, which led him,
down, from the highest range of intellect, to the level
of colloquial pleasantry, will never be forgotten, per
haps never equalled.

To observe that such a man was dear to his family
would be superfluous., To describe how dear, im
possible. Of this we might obtain some adequate con
ception, could we look into the retreat which he had
chosen for the solace of his future years ; which, en
livened by his presence, was so lately the mansion of
cheerfulness and content ; but now, alas ! of lamenta
tion and wo ! —

" For him no more the blazing hearth shall burn,"
Or tender consort wait with anxious care ;
" No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees, the envied kiss to share."

With his eye upon the eternal world, this dying hero
had been careful to prepare a testament, almost for the
sole purpose of bequeathing to his orphans the rich

VOL v. 27

206 MR. OTIS' EULOGY, &c.

legacy of his principles; and having exhibited, in his
last hours, to this little band the manner in which a
Christian should die, he drops, in his flight to heaven,
a summary of the principles, by which a man of honor
should live,

The universal sorrow manifested, in every part of
the union, upon the melancholy exit of this great man,
is an unequivocal testimonial of the public opinion of
his worth. The place of his residence is overspread
with a gloom, which bespeaks the presence of a pub
lic calamity, and the prejudices of party are absorbed
in the overflowing tide of national grief.

It is, indeed, a subject of consolation, that diversity
of political opinions has not yet extinguished the sen
timent of public gratitude. There is yet a hope, that
events like these, which bring home to our bosoms
the sensation of a ^common loss, may yet remind us of
our common interest, and of the times when, with one
accord, we joined in the homage of respect to our liv
ing as well as to our deceased worthies.

Should those days once more return, when the peo
ple of America, united as they once were united, shall
make merit the measure of their approbation and con
fidence, we may hope for a constant succession of pa
triots and heroes. But should our. country be rent by
factions, and the merit of the man be estimated by the
zeal of the partizan, irreparable will be the loss of
those few men, who, having once been esteemed by
all, might again have acquired the confidence of all,
and saved their country, in an hour of peril, by their
talents and virtues. —

" So stream the sorrows that embalm the brave ;
The tears which virtue sheds on glory's grave."

A DISCOURSE.

DELIVERED IN THE CITY OF ALBANY, OCCASIONED BY THE
DEATH OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON, JULY 9, 1804,

BY ELIPHALET NOTT,

PASTOR OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THAT PLACE.

" HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN !"

THE occasion explains the choice of my subject —
a subject on which I enter in obedience to your re
quest. You have assembled to express your elegiac
sorrows, and sad and solemn weeds cover you.

Before such an audience, and on such an occasion.
I enter on the duty assigned me with trembling. Do
not mistake my meaning. I tremble indeed — not,
however, through fear of failing to merit your applause ;
for what have I to do with that when addressing the
dying, and treading on the ashes of the dead; not
through fear of failing justly to portray the character
of that great man, who is at once the theme of my en
comium and regret. He needs not eulogy. His work
is finished, and death has removed him beyond my
censure, and I would fondly hope, through grace, above
my praise. You will ask then, why I tremble? I
tremble to think that I am called to attack, from this
place, a crime, the very idea of which almost freezes
one with -horror — a crime, too, which exists among the
polite and polished orders of society, and which is ac
companied with every aggravation ; committed with
cool deliberation, and openly in the face of day ! But
I have a duty to perform : and difficult and awful as
that dutv is, I will not shrink from it.

208 MR. NOTT:S DISCOURSE (X\

Would to God my talents were adequate to the oc
casion. But such as they are, I devoutly proffer them
to unfold the nature and counteract the influence of
that barbarous custom, which, like a resistless torrent,
is undermining the foundations of civil government,
breaking down the barriers of social happiness, and
sweeping away virtue, talents and domestic felicity, in
its desolating course.

Another arid an illustrious character — a father — a
general — a statesman — the very man who stood on an
eminence and without a rival among sages and he
roes, the future hope of his country in danger — this
man, yielding to the influence of a custom, which de
serves our eternal reprobation, has been brought to an
untimely end.

That the deaths of great and useful men should be
particularly noticed, is equally the dictate of reason
and revelation. The tears of Israel flowed at the de
cease of good Josiah, and to his memory the funeral
women chanted the solemn dirge. But neither ex
amples rior arguments are necessary to wake the sym
pathies of a grateful people on such occasions. The
death of public benefactors surcharges the heart, and
it spontaneously disburdens itself by a flow of sorrows.
Such was the death of Washington : to embalm whose
memory, and perpetuate whose deathless fame, we
lent our feeble, but unnecessary services. Such, also,
and more peculiarly so, has been the death of Hamil
ton. The tidings of the former moved us, mournful
ly moved us, and we wept. The account of the lat
ter chilled our hopes, and curdled our blood. The for
mer died in a good old age ; the latter was cut off" in
the midst of his usefulness. The former was a cus
tomary providence : we saw in it, if I may speak so,
the finger of God, and rested in his sovereignty. The
latter is not attended with this soothing circumstance.

The fall of Hamilton, owes its existence to mad de
liberation, and is marked by violence. The time, the
place, the circumstances, are arranged with barbarous

THE DEATH OF HAMILTON. 209

coolness. The instrument of death is levelled in day
light, and with well directed skill pointed at his heart.
Alas ! the event has proven that it was but too well di
rected. Wounded, mortally wounded, on the very spot
which still smoked with the blood of a favorite son,
into the arms of his indiscreet and cruel friend the
father fell.

Ah ! had he fallen in the course of nature ; or jeop
ardizing his life in defence of his country ; had he fallen —
but he did not. He fell in single combat — pardon my
mistake — he did not fall in single combat. His noble
nature refused to endanger the life of his antagonist.
But he exposed his own life. This was his crime :
and the sacredness of my office forbids that I should
hesitate explicitly to declare it so. He did not hesitate
to declare it so himself. " My religious and moral
principles are strongly opposed to duelling." These
are his words before he ventured to the field of death.
" I view the late transaction with sorrow and contri
tion." These are his words after his return. Hu
miliating end of illustrious greatness ! " How are the
mighty fallen!" And shall the mighty thus fall?
Thus shall the noblest lives be sacrificed and the rich
est blood be spilt ? « Tell it not in Gath ; publish it
not in the streets of Askelon .!"•

Think not that the fatal issue of the late inhuman
interview was fortuitous. No ; the hand, that guides
unseen the arrow of the archer, steadied and directed
the arm of the (Juellist. And why did it thus direct it ?
As a solemn memento — as a loud and awful warning to
a community where justice has slumbered — and slum
bered — and slumbered — while the wife has been rob
bed of her partner, the mother of her hopes, and life
after life rashly, and with an air of triumph, sported
away.

And was there, O my God ! no other sacrifice valua
ble enough — would the cry of no other blood reach
the place of retribution and wake justice, dozing over
her awful seat ! But though justice should still slum-

210 MR. NOTTS DISCOURSE ON

her, and retribution be delayed, we, who are the minis
ters of that God who will judge the judges of the
world, and whose malediction rests on him who does
his work unfaithfully, we will not keep silence.

I feel, my brethren, how incongruous my subject is
with the place I occupy. It is humiliating ; it is dis
tressing in a Christian country, and in churches conse
crated to the religion of Jesus, to be obliged to attack
a crime which outstrips barbarism, and would even
sink the character of a generous savage. But hu
miliating as it is, it is necessary. And must we then,
even for a moment, forget the elevation on which grace
hath placed us, and the light which the gospel sheds
around us? Must we place ourselves back in the
midst of barbarism ;. and instead of hearers, soften
ed to forgiveness by the love of Jesus, filled with no
ble sentiments towards our enemies, and waiting for
occasions, after the example of divinity, to do them
good ; instead of such hearers, must we suppose our
selves addressing hearts petrified to goodness, incapa
ble of mercy, and boiling with revenge ? Must we, O
my God! instead of exhorting those who hear us, to
go on unto perfection, adding to virtue chanty, and to
charity brotherly kindness; must we, as if surrounded
by an auditory, just emerging out of darkness, and
still cruel and ferocious, reason to convince them that
revenge is improper, and that to commit deliberate
murder, is sin ?

Yes, we must do this. Repeated violations of the
law, and the sanctuary, which the guilty find in public
sentiment, prove that it is necessary.

Withdraw, therefore, for a moment, ye celestial
spirits — ye holy angels accustomed to hover round
these altars, and listen to those strains of grace
which, heretofore, have filled this house of God.
Other subjects occupy us. Withdraw, therefore, and
leave us ; leave us to exhort Christian parents to re
strain their vengeance, and at least to keep back their
hands from blood ; to exhort youth, nurtured in Chris-

THE DEATH OF HAMILTON. 211

tian families, not rashly to sport with life, nor lightly
to wring the widow's heart with sorrows, and fill the
orphan's eye with tears.

In accomplishing the object which is before me, it
will not be expected, as it is not necessary, that I
should give a history of duelling. You need not be in
formed, that it originated in a dark and barbarous
age. The polished Greek knew nothing of it ; the no
ble Roman was above it. Rome held in equal detes
tation the man who exposed his life unnecessarily, and
him, who refused to expose it when the public good
required it* Her heroes were superior to private
contests. They indulged no vengeance except against
the enemies of their country. Their swords were not
drawn unless her honor was in danger ; which honor
they defended with their swords not only, but shielded
with their bosoms also, and were then prodigal of
their blood. But though Greece and Rome knew no
thing of duelling, it exists. It exists among us : and it
exists at once the most rash, the most absurd and
guilty practice, that ever disgraced a Christian nation.

Guilty — because it is a violation of the law. What
law ? The law of God. « Thou shalt not kill." This
prohibition was delivered by God himself, at Sinai, to
the Jews. And, that it is of universal and perpetual
obligation, is manifest from the nature of the crime
prohibited not only, but also from the express decla
ration of the Christian Lawgiver, who hath recogniz
ed its justice, and added to it the sanctions of his own
authority.

" Thou shalt not kill." Who ? Thou, creature. I,
the Creator, have given life, and thou shalt not take it
away ! When and under what circumstances may I
not take away life ? Never, and under no circum
stances, without my permission. It is obvious, that
no discretion whatever is here given. The prohibi
tion is addressed to every individual where the law of

* Sallust de bell. Catil. ix*

212 MR. NOTTS DISCOURSE ON

God is promulgated, and the terms made use of are
express and unequivocal. So that life cannot be
taken under any pretext, without incurring guilt, un
less by a permission sanctioned by the same authority
which sanctions the general law prohibiting it. From
this law, it is granted there are exceptions. These
exceptions, however, do not result from any sovereignty
which one creature has over the existence of another,
but from the positive appointment of that eternal Be
ing, whose " is the world and the fulness thereof. In
whose hand is the soul of every living creature, and
the breath of all mankind." Even the authority, which
we claim over the lives of animals, is not founded on
a natural right, but on a positive grant, made by the
Deity himself to Noah and his sons.* This grant
contains our warrant for taking the lives of animals.
But if we may not take the lives of animals without
permission from God, much less may we the life of
man, made in his image.

In what cases, then, has the Sovereign of life given
this permission ? In rightful war ;t by the civil ma
gistrate ;J and in necessary self-defence.§ Besides
these, I do not hesitate to declare, that in the oracles
of God there are no other. He, therefore, who takes
life in any other case, under whatever pretext, takes it
unwarrantably, is guilty of what the scriptures call
murder, and exposes himself to the malediction of that
God, who is an avenger of blood, and who hath said,
" At the hand of every man's brother will I require the
life of man — Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall
his blood be shed."

The duellist contravenes the law of God not only,
but the law of man also. To 'the prohibition of the
former have been added the sanctions of the latter.
Life taken in a duel, by the common law, is murder.

* Genesis ix. 3.

t 2 Samuel x. 12. Jeremiah xlviii, 10. Luke iii. 14.

J Exodus xxi. 12.

<5> Exodtfs xxii. 2.

THE 'DEATH OF HAMILTON. 213

And where this is not the case, the giving and receiv
ing of a challenge only, is, by statute, considered a high
misdemeanor, for which the principal and his second
are declared infamous, and disfranchised for twenty
years. Under what accumulated circumstances of
aggravation does the duellist jeopardize his own life,
or take the life of his antagonist ? I am sensible that,
in a licentious age, and when laws are made to yield
to the vices of those who move in the higher circles,
this crime is called by I know not what mild arid ac
commodating name. But before these altars ; in this
house of God, what is it ? It is murder — deliberate,
aggravated murder. If the duellist deny this, let him
produce his warrant from the Author of life, for taking
away from his creature the life which had been sove
reignly given. If he cannot do this, beyond all con
troversy, he is a murderer; for murder consists in
taking away life without the permission, and contrary
to the prohibition of him who gave it.

Who is it, then, that calls the duellist to the dan
gerous and deadly combat ? Is it God ? No ; on the
contrary, He forbids it. Is it, then, his country ? No ;
she also utters her prohibitory voice. Who is it then ?
A man of honor. And- who is this man of honor ? A
man, perhaps, whose honor is a name ; who prates,
with polluted lips, about the sacredness of character,
when his own is stained with crimes, and needs but
the single shade of murder to complete the dismal and
sickly picture. Every transgression of the divine law
implies great guilt, because it is the transgression of
infinite authority. But the crime of deliberately and
lightly taking life, has peculiar aggravations. It
is a crime committed against the written law not
only, but also against the dictates of reason, the re
monstrances of conscience, and every tender and amia
ble feeling of the heart. To the unfortunate sufferer,
it is the wanton violation of his most sacred rights.
It snatches him from his friends and his comforts;
terminates his state of trial, and precipitates him, un-

VOL. v. 28

214 MK. NOTT'S DISCOURSE ON

called for, and perhaps unprepared, into the presence
of his Judge.

You will say the duellist feels no malice. Be it so.
Malice, indeed, is murder in principle. But there may
be murder in reason, and in fact, where there is no
malice. Some other unwarrantable passion or princi
ple may lead to the unlawful taking of human life.
The highwayman, who cuts the throat and rifles the
pocket of the passing traveller, feels no malice. And
could he, with equal ease and no greater danger of
detection, have secured his booty without taking life,
he would have stayed his arm over the palpitating bo
som of his victim, and let the plundered suppliant pass.
Would the imputation of cowardice have been inevita
ble to the duellist, if a challenge had not been given
or accepted ? The imputation of want had been
no less inevitable to the robber, if the money of the
passing traveller had not been secured. Would the
duellist have been willing to have spared the life of his
antagonist, if the point of honor could otherwise have
been gained ? So would the robber if the point of pro
perty could have been. Who can say that the motives
of the one are not as urgent as the motives of the
other ? And the means, by which both obtain the ob
ject of their wishes, are the same. Thus, according to
the dictates of reason, as well as the law of God, the
highwayman and the duellist stand on ground equally
untenable, and support their guilty havoc of the hu
man race by arguments equally fallacious.

Is duelling guilty ? — So it is absurd. It is absurd as
a punishment, for it admits of no proportion to crimes :
and besides, virtue and vice, guilt and innocence, are
equally exposed by it, to death or suffering. As a re
paration, it is still more absurd, for it makes the injur
ed liable to a still greater injury. And as the vindica
tion of personal character, it is absurd even beyond
madness.

One man of honor, by some inadvertence, or per
haps with design, injures the sensibility of another man

THE DEATH OF HAMILTON. 215

of honor. In perfect character, the injured gentle
man resents it. He challenges the offender. The
offender accepts the challenge. The time is fixed.
The place is agreed upon. The circumstances, with
an air of solemn mania, are arranged ; and the prin
cipals, with their seconds and surgeons, retire under
the covert of some solitary hill, or upon the margin of
some unfrequented beach, to settle this important ques
tion of honor, by stabbing or shooting at each other.
One or the other, or both the parties, fall in this polite
and gentlemanlike contest. And what does this
prove ? It proves that one or the other, or both of
them, as the case may be, are marksmen. But it af
fords no evidence that either of them possess honor,
probity or talents. It is true, that he who falls in sin
gle combat, has the honor of being murdered : and he
who takes his life, the honor of a murderer. Besides
this, I know not of any glory which can redound to the
infatuated combatants, except it be what results from
having extended the circle of wretched widows, and
added to the number of hapless orphans. And yet,
terminate as it will, this frantic meeting, by a kind of
magic influence, entirely varnishes over a defective
and smutty character,^ transforms vice to virtue, cow
ardice to courage; makes falsehood, truth ; guilt, in
nocence — in one word, it gives a new complexion to
the whole state of things. The Ethiopian changes his
skin, the leopard his spot, and the debauched and
treacherous — having shot away the infamy of a sorry
life, comes back from the field of perfectibility, quite
regenerated, and, in the fullest sense, an honorable
man. He is now fit for the company of gentlemen.
He is admitted to that company, and should he again,
by acts of vileness, stain this purity of character so
nobly acquired, and should any one have the effronte
ry to say he has done so, again he stands ready to vin
dicate his honor, and by another act of homicide, to
wipe away the stain which has been attached to it.
I might illustrate this article by example. 1 mighf

216 MR. NQTT-'S DISCOURSE OX

produce instances of this mysterious transformation
of character, in the sublime circles of moral refine
ment, furnished by the higher orders of the fashiona
ble world, which the mere firing of pistols has produc
ed. But the occasion is too awful for irony. Absurd
as duelling is, were it absurd only, though we might
smile at the weakness and pity the folly of its abettors,
there would be no occasion for seriously attacking
them. But to what has been said, I add, that duelling
is rash and presumptuous.

Life is the gift of God, and it was never bestowed
to be sported with. To each, the Sovereign of the
universe has marked out a sphere to move in, and as
signed a part to act. This part respects ourselves
not only, but others also. Each lives for the benefit
of all. ,-

As in the system of nature the sun shines, not to
display its own brightness and answer its own conven
ience, but to warm, enlighten and bless the world ; so
in the system of animated beings, there is a depend
ence, a correspondence, and a relation, through an in
finitely extended, dying and reviving universe — " in
which no man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to
himself." Friend is related to friend ; the father to his
family ; the individual to community. To every mem
ber of which, having fixed his station and assigned his
duty, the God of nature says, " Keep this trust — de
fend this post." For whom? For thy friends, thy
family, thy country. And having received such a
charge, and for such a purpose, to desert it is rashness
and temerity.

Since the opinions of men are as they are, do you
ask, how you shall avoid the imputation of cowardice,
if you do not fight when you are injured ? Ask your
family how you will avoid the imputation of cruelty;
ask your conscience how you will avoid the imputa
tion of guilt : ask God how you will avoid his maledic
tion, if you do ? These are previous questions. Let
these first be answered, and it will be easy to reply to

THE DEATH OF HAMILTON. 217

any which may follow them. If you only accept a
challenge, when you believe, in your conscience, that
duelling is wrong, you act the coward. The dastard
ly fear of the world governs you. Awed by its me
naces, you conceal your sentiments, appear in dis
guise, and act in guilty conformity to principles not
your own, and that too in the most solemn moment,
and when engaged in an act which exposes you to
death.

But if it be rashness to accept, how passing rash
ness is it, in a sinner, to give a challenge? Does it
become him, whose life is measured out by crimes,
to be extreme to mark, and punctilious to resent,
whatever is amiss in others ? Must the duellist, who
now disdaining to forgive, so imperiously demands sa
tisfaction to the uttermost — must this man himself,
trembling at the recollection of his offences, presently
appear a suppliant before the mercy-seat of God?
Imagine this, and the case is not imaginary, and you
cannot conceive an instance of greater inconsistency,
or of more presumptuous arrogance. Therefore,
" avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto
wrath ; for vengeance is mine, I will repay it, saith
the Lord." Do you ask, then, how you shall conduct
towards your enemy, who hath lightly done you
wrong ? If he be hungry, feed him ; if naked, clothe
him ; if thirsty, give him drink. Such, had you pre
ferred your question to Jesus Christ, is the answer he
had given you. By observing xwhich, you will usual
ly subdue, and always act more honorably than your
enemy.

I feel, my brethren, as a minister of Jesus and a
teacher of his gospel, a noble elevation on this arti
cle. Compare the conduct of the Christian, acting
in conformity to the principles of religion, and of the
duellist, acting in conformity to the principles of ho
nor, and let reason say, which bears the marks of the
most exalted greatness. Compare them, and let rea
son say, which enjoys the most calm serenity of mind

218 MR. NOTTS DISCOURSE ON

in time, and which is likely to receive the plaudit oi
his Judge in immortality. God, from his throne, be
holds not a nohler object on his footstool, than the
man who loves his enemies, pities their errors, and
forgives the injuries they do him. This is, indeed,
the very spirit of the heavens. It is the image of His
benignity, whose glory fills them.

To return to the subject before us — guilty, absurd
and rash, as duelling is, it has its advocates. And
had it not had its advocates — had not a strange pre
ponderance of opinion been in favor of it, never, O la
mentable Hamilton! hadst thou thus fallen, in the
midst of thy days, and before thou hadst reached the
zenith of thy glory !

O that I possessed the talent of eulogy, and that I
might be permitted to indulge the tenderness of friend
ship, in paying the last tribute to his memory ! O that
I were capable of placing this great man before you !
Could I do this, I should furnish you with an argument,
the most practical, the most plain, the most convincing,
except that drawn from the mandate of God, that was
ever furnished against duelling — that horrid practice,
which has, in an awful moment, robbed the world of
such exalted worth. But I cannot do this ; I can
only hint at the variety and exuberance of his ex
cellence.

The Man, on whom nature seems originally to have
impressed the stamp of greatness, whose genius
beamed, from the retirement of collegiate life, with a
radiance which dazzled, and a loveliness which charm
ed the eye of sages.

The Hero, called from his sequestered retreat, whose
first appearance in the field, though a stripling, con
ciliated the esteem of Washington, our good old fa
ther. Moving by whose side, during all the perils of
the revolution, our young chieftain was a contributor
to the veteran's glory, the guardian of his person, and
the copartner of his toils.

The Conqueror, who, sparing of human blood, when

THE DEATH OF HAMILTON. 219

victory favored, stayed the uplifted arm, and nobly said
to the vanquished enemy, " Live !"

The Statesman, the correctness of whose principles,
and the strength of whose mind, are inscribed on the
records of Congress, and on the annals of the council-
chamber; whose genius impressed itself upon the
constitution of his country ; and whose memory, the
government, illustrious fabric, resting on this basis,
will perpetuate while it lasts : and shaken by the vio
lence of party, should it fall, which may heaven avert,
his prophetic declarations will be found inscribed on
its ruins.

The Counsellor, who was at once the pride of the
bar and the admiration of the court ; whose apprehen
sions were quick as lightning, and whose develop
ment of truth was luminous as its path ; whose argu
ment no change of circumstances could embarrass ;
whose knowledge appeared intuitive; and who, by
a single glance, and with as much facility as the
eye of the eagle passes over the landscape, surveyed
the whole field of controversy ; saw in what way truth
might be most successfully defended, and how error
must be approached; and who, without ever stop
ping, ever hesitating, by a rapid and manly march, led
the listening judge and the fascinated juror, step by
step, through a delightsome region, brightening as he
advanced, till his argument rose to demonstration,
and eloquence was rendered useless by conviction;
whose talents were employed on the side of right
eousness ; whose voice, whether in the council-cham
ber, or at the bar of justice, was virtue's consolation :
at whose approach oppressed humanity felt a secret
rapture, and the heart of injured innocence leapt for

joy-
Where Hamilton was — in whatever sphere he mov
ed, the friendless had a friend, the fatherless a father,
and the poor man, though unable to reward his kind
ness, found an advocate. It was when the rich op
pressed the poor; when the powerful menaced the

220 MR- NOTT'S DISCOURSE ON

defenceless; when truth was disregarded, or the eter
nal principles of justice violated ; it was on these oc
casions, that he exerted all his strength ; it was on
these occasions, that he sometimes soared so high
and shone with a radiance so transcendent, I had al
most said, so " heavenly, as filled those around him
with awe, and gave to him the force and authority of a
prophet."

The Patriot, whose integrity baffled the scrutiny of
inquisition ; whose manly virtue never shaped itself to
circumstances; who, always great, always himself,
stood amidst the varying tides of party, firm, like the
rock, which, far from land, lifts its majestic top above
the waves, and remains unshaken by the storms which
agitate the ocean.

The Friend, who knew no guile — whose bosom was
transparent and deep ; in the bottom of whose heart
was rooted every tender and sympathetic virtue ;
whose various worth opposing parties acknowledged
while alive, and on whose tomb they unite, with equal
sympathy and grief, to heap their honors.

I know he had his failings. I see, on the picture of
his life — a picture rendered awful by greatness, and
luminous by virtue, some dark shades. On these,
let the tear, that pities human weakness, fall : on these,
let the veil, which covers human frailty, rest. As a
hero, as a statesman, as a patriot, he lived nobly : and
would to God I could add, he nobly fell. Unwilling to
admit his error in this respect, I go back to the period
of discussion. I see him resisting the threatened in
terview. I imagine myself present in his chamber.
Various reasons, for a time, seem to hold his determi
nation in arrest. Various and moving objects pass
before him, and speak a dissuasive language. His
country, which may need his counsels to guide, and
his arm to defend, utters her veto. The partner of his
youth, already covered with weeds, and whose tears
flow down into her bosom, intercedes ! His babes,
stretching out their little hands and pointing to a

THE DEATH OF HAMILTON. 221

weeping mother, with lisping eloquence, but eloquence
which reaches a parent's heart, cry out, " Stay, stay,
dear papa, and live for us !" In the mean time, the
spectre of a fallen son, pale and ghastly, approaches,
opens his bleeding bosom, and as the harbinger of
death, points to the yawning tomb, and warns a hesi
tating father of the issue! He pauses: reviews
these sad objects : and reasons on the subject. I
admire his magnanimity, I approve his reasoning,
and I wait to hear him reject, with indignation, the
murderous proposition, and to see him spurn from his
presence the presumptuous bearer of it. But I wait
in vain. It was $. moment in which his great wisdom
forsook him — a moment in which Hamilton was not
himself. He yielded to the force of an imperious cus
tom: and yielding, he sacrificed a life in which all
had an interest — and he is lost — lost to his country,
lost to his family, lost to us. For this act, because
he disclaimed it, and was penitent, I forgive him. But
there are those whom I cannot forgive. I mean not
his antagonist; over whose erring steps, if there be
tears in heaven, a pious mother looks down and weeps.
If he be capable of feeling, he suffers already all that
humanity can suffer — suffers, and wherever he may
fly, will suffer, with the poignant recollection of having
taken the life of one, who was too magnanimous, in
return, to attempt his own. Had he known this, it
must have paralyzed his arm, while it pointed, at so
incorruptible a bosom, the instrument of death.
Does he know this now? His heart, if it be not
adamant, must soften — if it be not ice, must melt.
But on this article 1 forbear. Stained with blood as
he is. if he be penitent, I forgive him — and if he be
not, before these altars, where all of us appear as sup
pliants, I wish not to excite your vengeance, but
rather, in behalf of an object, rendered wretched and
pitiable by crime, to wake your prayers.

But I have said, and I repeat it, there are those
whom I cannot forgive. I cannot forgive that minister

VOL. v. 29

222 MR. NOTT'S DISCOURSE ON

at the altar, who has hitherto forborne to remonstrate
on this subject. I cannot forgive that public prosecu
tor, who, intrusted with the duty of avenging his coun
try's wrongs, has seen those wrongs, and taken no
measures to avenge them. I cannot forgive that
judge upon the bench, or that governor in the chair of
state, who has lightly passed over such offences. I
cannot forgive the public, in whose opinion the duel
list finds a sanctuary. I cannot forgive you, my
brethren, who, till this late hour, have been silent,
while successive murders were committed. No; 1
cannot forgive you, that you have not, in common with
the freemen of this state, raised your voice to the
powers that be. and loudly and explicitly demanded an
execution of your laws ; demanded this in a manner,
which, if it did not reach the ear of government, would
at least have reached the heavens, and plead your
excuse before the God that filleth them — in whose
presence as I stand, I should not feel myself innocent
of the blood that crieth against us, had I been silent.
But I have not been silent. Many of you who hear
me, are my witnesses — the walls of yonder temple,
where I have heretofore addressed you, are my wit
nesses, how freely I have animadverted on this sub
ject, in the presence both of those who have violated
the laws, and of those whose indispensable duty it is to
see the laws executed on those who violate them.

I enjoy another opportunity ; and would to God, 1
might be permitted to approach for once the late
scene of death. Would to God, I could there assem
ble, on the one side, the disconsolate mother with her
seven fatherless children ; and on the other, those who
administer the justice of my country. Could I do
this, I would point them to these sad objects. I would
entreat them, by the agonies of bereaved fondness, to
listen to the widow's heartfelt groans ; to mark the
orphan's sighs and tears. And having done this, I
would uncover the breathless corps of Hamilton — I
would lift from his gaping wound, his bloody mantl

THE DEATH OF HAMILTON. 223

I would hold it up to heaven before them, and 1 would
ask, in the name of God, I would ask, whether, at the
sight of it, they felt no compunction?

You will ask, perhaps, what can be done, to arrest
the progress of a practice which has yet so many ad
vocates ? I answer, nothing — if it be the deliberate
intention to do nothing. But, if otherwise, much is
within our power. Let, then, the governor see that
the laws are executed ; let the council displace the
man who offends against their majesty ; let courts of
justice frown from their bar, as unworthy to appear be
fore them, the murderer and his accomplices ; let the
people declare him unworthy of their confidence who
engages in such sanguinary contests ; let this be done,
and should life still be taken in single combat, then the
governor, the council, the court, the people, looking
up to the Avenger of sin, may say, " we are innocent,
we are innocent." Do you ask, how proof can be ob
tained ? How can it be avoided ? The parties re
turn, hold up, before our eyes, the instruments of
death, publish to the world the circumstances of their
interview, and even, with an air of insulting triumph,
boast how coolly and deliberately they proceeded in
violating one of the most sacred laws of earth and

c5

heaven !

Ah ! ye tragic shores of Hoboken, crimsoned with
the richest blood, I tremble at the crimes you record
against us — the annual register of murders which you
keep and send up to God ! Place of inhuman cruelty !
beyond the limits of reason, of duty and of religion,
where man assumes a more barbarous nature, and
ceases to be man. What poignant, lingering sorrows
do thy lawless combats occasion to surviving rela
tives ! Ye who have hearts of pity — ye who have ex
perienced the anguish of dissolving friendship — who
have wept, and still weep, over the mouldering ruins
of departed kindred, ye can enter into this reflection.

O thou disconsolate widow ! robbed, so cruelly rob
bed, and in so short a time, both of a husband and a

224 MR. NOTT'S DISCOURSE ON

son, what must be the plenitude of thy sufferings !
Could we approach thee, gladly would we drop the
tear of sympathy, and pour into thy bleeding bosom
the balm of consolation ! But how could we comfort
her whom God hath not comforted ? To His throne.
Jet us lift up our voice and weep. O God ! if thou
art still the widow's husband, and the father of the
fatherless, if in the fulness of thy goodness there be
yet mercies in store for miserable mortals, pity, O pity
this afflicted mother, and grant that her hapless or
phans may find a friend, a benefactor, a father, in
Thee ! On this article I have done : and may God
add his blessing.

But I have still a claim upon your patience. I can
not here repress my feelings, and thus let pass the pre
sent opportunity.

" How are the mighty fallen." And, regardless as
we are of vulgar deaths, shall not the fall of the mighty
affect us ? A short time since, and he, who is the oc
casion of our sorrows, was the ornament of his coun
try. He stood on an eminence, and glory covered him.
From that eminence he has fallen — suddenly, forever,
fallen. His intercourse with the living world is now
ended; and those, who would hereafter find him, must
seek him in the grave. There, cold and lifeless, is the
heart which just now was the seat of friendship.
There, dim and sightless is the eye, whose radiant
and enlivening orb beamed with intelligence; and
there, closed forever, are those lips, on whose persua
sive accents we have so often, and so lately, hung
with transport ! From the darkness which rests upon
his tomb, there proceeds, methinks, a light in which
it is clearly seen, that those gaudy objects, which men
pursue, are only phantoms. In this light, how dimly
shines the splendor of victory; how humble appears
the majesty of grandeur ! j The bubble, which seemed
to have so much solidity, has burst; and we again
see, that all below the sun is vanity.

True, the funeral eulogy hasl)een pronounced ; the

THE DEATH OF HAMILTON, 225

sad and solemn procession has moved ; the badge of
mourning has already been decreed, and presently the
sculptured marble will lift up its front, proud to per
petuate the name of Hamilton, and rehearse to the
passing traveller his virtues. Just tributes of respect!
And to the living useful. But to him, mouldering in
his narrow and humble habitation, what are they?
How vain ! how unavailing !

Approach, and behold, while I lift from his sepulchre
its covering ! Ye admirers of his greatness ; ye emu
lous of his talents and his fame, approach, and behold
him now. How pale ! How silent ! No martial bands
admire the adroitness of his movements : no fascinat
ed throng weep, and melt, and tremble, at his elo
quence ! Amazing change ! A shroud ! a coffin ! a
narrow, subterraneous cabin ! This is all that now
remains of Hamilton ! And is this all that remains
of him ? During a life so transitory, what lasting mo
nument, then, can our fondest hopes erect !

My brethren ! we stand on the borders of an awful
gulf, which is swallowing up all things human. And
is there, amidst this universal wreck, nothing stable,
nothing abiding, nothing immortal, on which poor,
frail, dying man can fasten ? Ask the hero, ask the
statesman, whose wisdom you have been accustomed
to revere, and he will tell you. He will tell you, did 1
say? He has already told you, from his death-bed,
and his illumined spirit, still whispers from the hea
vens, with well known eloquence, the solemn admo
nition.

" Mortals ! hastening to the tomb, and once the
companions of my pilgrimage, take warning and avoid
my errors ; cultivate the virtues I have recommend
ed ; choose the Saviour I have chosen ; live disinter
estedly; live for immortality; and would you rescue
any thing from final dissolution, lay it up in God."

Thus speaks, methinks, our deceased benefactor,
and thus he acted during his last sad hours. To the
exclusion of every other concern, religion now claims

226 MR. NOTTS DISCOURSE ON

.4 .

all his thoughts. Jesus ! Jesus, is now his only hope.
The friends of Jesus are his friends ; the ministers of
the altar his companions. While these intercede, he
listens in awful silence, or in profound submission
whispers his assent. Sensible, deeply sensible of his
sins, he pleads no merit of his own. He repairs to
the mercy-seat, and there pours out his penitential sor
rows — there he solicits pardon. Heaven, it should
seem, heard and pitied the suppliant's cries. Disbur
dened of his sorrows, and looking up to God, he ex
claims, " Grace, rich grace." " I have," said he,
clasping his dying hands, and with a faltering tongue,
" I have a tender reliance on the mercy of God in
Christ." In token of this reliance, and as an expres
sion of his faith, he receives the holy sacrament ; and
having done this, his mind becomes tranquil and se
rene. Thus he remains, thoughtful indeed, but un
ruffled to the last, and meets death with an air of dig
nified composure, and with an eye directed to the
heavens.

This last act, more than any other, sheds glory on
his character. Every thing else death effaces. Reli
gion alone abides with him on his death-bed. He dies
a Christian. This is all which can be enrolled of him
among the archives of eternity. This is all that can
make his name great in heaven. Let not the sneering
infidel persuade you that this last act of homage to
the Saviour, resulted from an enfeebled state of men
tal faculties, or from perturbation occasioned by the
near approach of death. No ; his opinions concerning
the divine mission of Jesus Christ, and the validity of
the holy scriptures, had long been settled, and settled
after laborious investigation and extensive and deep
research. These opinions were not concealed. I
knew them myself. Some of you, who hear me, knew
them ; and had his life been spared, it was his deter
mination to have published them to the world, to
gether with the facts and reasons on which they were
founded*

THE DEATH OF HAMILTON. 227

At a time when scepticism, shallow and superficial
indeed, but depraved and malignant, is breathing forth
its pestilential vapor, and polluting, by its unhallowed
touch, every thing divine arid sacred ; it is consoling
to a devout mind to reflect, that the great and the
wise, and the good of all ages, those superior gen
iuses, whose splendid talents have elevated them al
most above mortality, and placed them next in order
to angelic natures — yes, it is consoling to a devout
mind to reflect, that while dwarfish infidelity lifts up
its deformed head, and mocks, these illustrious per
sonages, though living in different ages, inhabiting
different countries, nurtured in different schools, des
tined to different pursuits, and differing on various
subjects, should all, as if touched with an impulse from
heaven, agree to vindicate the sacredness of Revela
tion, and present with one accord, their learning, their
talents and their virtue, on the gospel altar, as an offer
ing to Emanuel.

This is not exaggeration. Who was it, that, over
leaping the narrow bounds which had hitherto been
set to the human mind, ranged abroad through the
immensity of space, discovered and illustrated those
laws by which the Deity unites, binds and governs all
things ? Who was it, soaring into the sublime of as
tronomic science, numbered the stars of heaven, mea
sured their spheres, and called them by their names ?
It was Newton. But Newton was a Christian. New
ton, great as he was, received instruction from the lips,
and laid his honors at the feet of Jesus. Who was it
that developed the hidden combination, the compo
nent parts of bodies ? Who was it, dissected the ani
mal, examined the flower, penetrated the earth, and
ranged the extent of organic nature ? It was Boyle.
But Boyle was a Christian. Who was it, that lifted
the veil which had for ages covered the intellectual
world, analyzed the human mind, defined its powers,
and reduced its operations to certain and fixed laws ?
It was Locke. But Locke too was a Christian.

228 MR. NOTT'S DISCOURSE ON

What more shall I say ? For time would fail me, to
speak of Hale, learned in the law ; of Addison, admir
ed in the schools; of Milton, celebrated among the
poets ; and of Washington, immortal in the field and
the cabinet. To this catalogue of professing Chris
tians, from among, if I may speak so, a higher order of
beings, may now be added the name of Alexander
Hamilton — a name which raises in the mind the idea of
whatever is great, whatever is splendid, whatever is
illustrious in human nature; and which is now added
to a catalogue which might be lengthened — and
lengthened — and lengthened, with the names of illus
trious characters, whose lives have blessed society,
and whose works form a column high as heaven ; a
column of learning, of wisdom, and of greatness,
which will stand to future ages, an eternal monument
of the transcendent talents of the advocates of Chris
tianity, when every fugitive leaf, from the pen of the
canting infidel witlings of the day, shall be swept by
the tide of time from the annals of the world, and buri
ed with the names of their authors in oblivion.

To conclude. " How are the mighty fallen !" Fallen
before the desolating hand of death. Alas ! the ruins
of the tomb ! The ruins of the tomb are an em
blem of the ruins of the world; when not an individu
al, but a universe, already marred by sin and hasten
ing to dissolution, shall agonize and die ! Directing
your thoughts from the one, fix them for a moment
on the other. Anticipate the concluding scene, the
final catastrophe of nature : when the sign of the Son of
man shall be seen in heaven ; when the Son of man him
self shall appear in the glory of his Father, and send forth
judgment unto victory. The fiery desolation envelopes
towns, palaces and fortresses ; the heavens pass away !
the earth melts! and all those magnificent produc
tions of art, which ages, heaped on ages, have reared
up, are in one awful day reduced to ashes.

Against the ruins of that day, as well as the ruins of
the tomb which precede it, the gospel, in the cross of its

THE DEATH OF HAMILTON. 229

great High Priest, offers you all a sanctuary ; a sanc
tuary secure and abiding ; a sanctuary, which no lapse
of time, nor change of circumstances, can destroy.
No; neither life nor death. No; neither principali
ties nor powers.

Every thing else is fugitive ; every thing else is muta
ble ; every thing else will fail you. But this, the cita
del of the Christian's hopes, will never fail you. Its
base is adamant. It is cemented with the richest
blood. The ransomed of the Lord crowd its portals.
Embosomed in the dust which it encloses, the bodies
of the redeemed "rest in hope." On its top dwells
the Church of the first born, who in delightful response
with the angels of light, chant redeeming love. Against
this citadel the tempest beats, and around it the storm
rages, and spends its force in vain. Immortal in its
nature, and incapable of change, it stands, and stands
firm, amidst the ruins of a mouldering world, and en
dures forever.

Thither fly, ye prisoners of hope ! — that when earth,
air, elements, shall have passed away, secure of exist
ence and felicity, you may join with saints in glory, to
perpetuate the song which lingered on the faltering
tongue of Hamilton, " Grace — rich Grace."

God grant us this honor. Then shall the measure
of our joy be full, and to his name shall be the glory m
Christ.

VOL. * 30

AN ORATION,

DELIVERED

BY RICHARD RUSH,

ON THE 4TH OF JULY, 1812, IN THE HALL OP THE HOUSE
OF REPRESENTATIVES, AT WASHINGTON : AT THE RE
QUEST OF THE COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENT FOR THE
CELEBRATION OF THAT DAY.

SENSIBLY as I feel, fellow-citizens, the honor of hav
ing been selected to address you on such an occasion
as this, 1 am not less sensible of the difficulties of the
task. Not that there is any thing intrinsically arduous
in a celebration, in this form, of the most brilliant politi
cal anniversary of the world ; but as the subject has
been repeatedly exhibited, under so many points of
view, I am apprehensive of tiring, without being able
to requite, the attention with which you may be good
enough to honor my endeavors. The fruitful subject
must still sustain me, and I proceed with unfeigned
diffidence, and the most profound respect for this dis
tinguished and enlightened assembly, to perform the
office assigned me.*

During each return of this day for nearly thirty suc
cessive years, our country rested in all the security and
all the blessings of peace. But the scene and the aspect
are changed. The menacing front of war is before
us, to awaken our solicitudes, to demand at the hands
of each citizen of the republic the most active energies

* The President of the United States, Heads of Department, mem
bers of Congress, &c., as well as citizens and strangers, were present
at the delivery of this discourse.

MR. RUSH'S ORATION, &c. 231

of duty ; to ask, if need be, the largest sacrifices of
advantage and of ease. The tranquillity, the enjoy
ments, the hopes of peace, are, for a while, at an end.
These, with their endearing concomitants, are to give
place to the stronger and more agitating passions, to
the busy engagements, to the solemn and anxious
thoughts, to the trials, to the sufferings, that follow in
the train of war.

Man, in his individual nature, becomes virtuous by
constant struggles against his own imperfections. His
intellectual eminence, which puts him at the head of
created beings, is attained also by long toil, and painful
self-denials, bringing with them, but too often, despond
ence to his mind, and hazards to his frame. It would
seem to be a law of his existence, that great enjoyment
is only to be obtained as the reward of great exertion.
« She shall go to a wealthy place," but her way shall be
" through fire and through water." It seems the irre
versible lot of nations, that their permanent well-being
is to be achieved also through severe probations.
Their origin is often in agony and blood, and their
safety to be maintained only by constant vigilance, by-
arduous efforts, by a willingness to encounter danger
and by actually and frequently braving it. Their pros
perity, their rights, their liberties, are, alas, scarcely
otherwise to be placed upon a secure and durable basis !
It is in vain that the precepts of the moralist, or the
maxims of a sublimated reason, are levelled at the in-
utility, if not the criminality of wars; in vain that
eloquence portrays, that humanity deplores the misery
which they inflict. If the wishes of the philanthropist
could be realized, then, indeed, happily for us, happi
ly for the whole human race, they would be banished
forever from the world. But while selfishnes, ambi
tion, and the lust of plunder, continue to infest the bo
soms of the rulers of nations, wars will take place,
they always have taken place, and the nation that
shall, at this day, hope to shelter itself by standing, in
practice, on their abstract impropriety, must expect to

232

MR RUSH'S ORATION, AT

see its very foundations assailed ; assailed by cunning
and artifice, or by the burst and fury of those fierce,
ungoverned passions, which its utmost forbearance
would not be able to deprecate or appease. It would
assuredly fall, and with fatal speed, the victim of its
own impracticable virtue.

Thirty years, fellow-citizens, is a long time to have
been exempt from the calamities of war. Few nations
of the world, in any age, have enjoyed so long an ex
emption. It is a fact that affords, in itself, the most
honorable and incontestible proof, that those who have
guided the destinies of this, have ardently cherished
peace ; for, it is impossible, but that during the lapse of
such a period, abundant provocation must have pre
sented, had not our government and people been slow
to wrath, and almost predetermined against wars. It
is a lamentable truth, that during the whole of this
period we have been the subjects of unjust treatment
at the hands of other nations, and that the constancy
of our own forbearance has been followed up by the
constant infliction of wrongs upon ourselves. When,
let us ask with exultation, when have ambassadors
from other countries been sent to our shores to com
plain of injuries done by the American states ? What
nation have the American states plundered ? What
nation have the American states outraged ? Upon
what rights have the American states trampled ? In
the pride of justice and of true honor, we answer
none; but we have sent forth from ourselves the mes
sengers of peace and conciliation, again and again,
across seas, and to distant countries ; to ask, earnestly
to sue, for a cessation of the injuries done to us. They
have gone charged with our well founded complaints, to
deprecate the longer practice of unfriendly treatment;
to protest, under the sensibility of real suffering,
against that course which made the persons and the
property of our countrymen the subjects of rude seizure
and rapacious spoliation. These have been the ends
they were sent to obtain ; ends too fair for protracted

>N, JULY 4,

WASHINGTON, JULY 4, 1812. 233

refusals, too intelligible to have been entangled in eva
sive subtiities, too legitimate to have been neglected
in hostile silence. When their ministers have been
sent to us, what has been the aim of their missions ?
To urge redress for wrongs done to them, shall we
again ask ? No, the melancholy reverse ! for in too
many instances they have come to excuse, to palliate,
or even to endeavor, in some shape, to rivet those, in
flicted by their own sovereigns upon us.

Perhaps the annals of no nation, of the undoubted
resources of this, afford a similar instance of encroach
ments upon its essential rights, for so long a time,
without some exertion of the public force to check or
to prevent them. The entire amount of property of
which, during a space of about twenty years, our citi
zens have been plundered by the belligerent powers of
Europe, would form, could it be ascertained, a curious
and perhaps novel record of persevering injustice on
the part of nations professing to be at peace. Unless
recollection be awakened into effort, we are not our
selves sensible, and it requires at this day some effort
to make us so, of the number and magnitude of the
injuries that have been heaped upon us. They teach
in pathology, that the most violent impressions lose
the power of exciting sensation, when applied gradu
ally and continued for a long time. This has been
strikingly true in its application to ourselves as a na
tion. The aggressions, we have received, have made
a regular, and the most copious part of our national
occurrences, and stand incorporated, under an aspect
more prominent than any other, with our annual histo
ry. Our state papers have scarcely, since the present
government began, touched any other subject ; and
our statute book will be found to record as well the
aggressions themselves as peacefuj attempts at their
removal, in various fruitless acts of legislative interpo
sition. It may strike, even the best informed, with a
momentary surprise when it is mentioned, that for
eighteen successive years the official communication

234 MR- RUSH'S ORATION, AT

from the head of the executive government to both
Houses of Congress, at the opening of the annual ses
sions, has embraced a reference to some well ascer
tained infringement of our rights as an independent
state ! Where is the parallel of this in the history of
any nation holding any other than a rank of permanent
weakness or inferiority ? As subsequent and superior
misfortunes expel the remembrance of those which
have gone before, so distinct injuries as we have pro
gressively received them, have continued to engross
for their day, our never tiring remonstrances.

Still, it may be said, we have been prosperous and
happy ! So we have relatively. But we have, assur
edly, been abridged of our full and rightful measure of
prosperity. Of a nation composed of millions, calami
tous, indeed, beyond example, would be its lot, if, in its
early stages, the domestic condition of all, or the chief
part of its inhabitants was, in any sensible degree,
touched with misery or overwhelmed with ruin. This
marks the fall of nations. It is not the way in which
national misfortunes and an untoward national fate
begin to operate. We protest against the principle
which inculcates constant submission to wrongs. To
ourselves, to our posterity, this is alike due. With
what palliation would it be replied to the plunder of a
rich man, that enough was left for his comfortable sub
sistence ? If our ships are taken, is it sufficient that
our houses are left ; if our mariners are seized, is it a
boon that our farmers, our mechanics, our laborers are
spared ; that those who sit behind the barriers of afflu
ence are safe? To what ultimate dangers would not
so partial an estimate of the protecting duty open the
way ? Happily, we trust, the nation, on a scale of
more enlarged equity and wiser forecast, has judged
and has willed differently. Having essayed its utmost
to avert its wrongs by peaceful means, it has de
termined on appealing to the sword, not on the ground
of immediate pressure alone, but on the still higher
one that longer submission to them holds out a pros-

WASHINGTON, JULY 4, 1812. 235

pect of permanent evil, a prospect rendered certain
by the experience we have ourselves acquired, that
forbearance for more than twenty years has not only
invited a repetition, but an augmentation of trespasses,
increasing in bitterness as well as number, increasing
in the most flagrant prostrations of justice, presumptu
ously avowed at length to be devoid of all pretext of
moral right, and promulgated as the foundation of a
system intended to be as permanent as its elements
are depraved.

It is cause of the deepest regret, fellow- citizens, that
while we are about to enter upon a conflict with one
nation, our multiplied and heavy causes of complaint
against another should remain unredressed. It adds
to this regret, that, although a last attempt is still de
pending, the past injustice of the latter nation, wan
toning also in rapacity, leaves but the feeblest hope of
their satisfactory and peaceful adjustment.

Some there are, who shrink back at the idea of war
with Britain ! War with the nation from which we
sprung, and where still sleep the ashes of our ances
tors; whose history is our history, whose firesides
are our firesides, whose illustrious names are our
boast, whose glory should be our glory! Yes, we
feel these truths ! We reject the poor definition of
country which would limit it to an occupancy of the
same little piece of earth ! A common stock of an
cestry, a kindred face and blood, the links that grow
upon a thousand moral and domestic sympathies
should indeed reach further, and might once have
been made to defy the intermediate roll of an ocean to
sunder them apart.

But, who was it that first broke these ties ? who was
it that first forgot, that put to scorn such generous
ties ? Let their own historians, their own orators an
swer. Hear the language of a member of the British
house of commons, in the year 1765 : " They children
planted by your care ! No ! your oppression plant
ed them in America. Thev fled from vour tvrannv

236 MR. RUSH'S ORATION, AT

into an uncultivated land, where they were exposed to
all the hardships to which human nature is liable ; to
the savage cruelty of the enemy of the wilderness, a
people the most subtle and the most formidable upon
the face of the earth : and yet they met all these hard
ships with pleasure, compared with those they suffer
ed in their own country, where they should have been
treated as friends. They nourished by your indul
gence ? No, they grew by your neglect. When you
began to care about them, that care was exercised in
sending persons to rule over them, who were the de
puties of some deputy, sent to spy out their liberty, to
misrepresent their actions, to prey upon their sub
stance ; men whose behaviour has caused the blood of
those sons of liberty to recoil within them. They pro
tected by your arms? They have nobly taken up
arms in your defence ; have exerted their valor,
amidst their constant and laborious industry, for the
defence of a country the interior of which has yield
ed all its little savings to your enlargement, while
its frontier was drenched in blood."* Yes, who was
it we ask, first tore such generous sympathies ? Let
the blood of Concord and of Lexington again an
swer ! Our whole country converted into a field of
battle, the bayonet thrust at our bosoms ! and for
what ? for asking only the privileges of Britons ;
while they claimed " to bind us in all cases whatso
ever." Against all that history teaches, will they
charge upon us the crime of rending these ties ? They
compelled us into a rejection of them all — a rejection
to which we were long loth — by their constant exer
cise of unjust power ; by laying upon us the hand of
sharp, systematic oppression; by attacking us with
fierce vengeance. With the respect, due from faithful

* So actively did the American colonies co-operate with Great
Britain, in the memorable seven years' war, to which this speech of
Colonel Barre alludes, that they are said to have lost nearly thirty
thousand of their young men. See Marshall's Life of Washington,
vol. 5. p. 85.

WASHINGTON, JULY 4, 1812. 23?

subjects, but with the dignity of freemen, did we, with
long patience, petition, supplicate, for a removal of
our wrongs, new oppressions, insults and hostile
troops were our answers !

When Britain shall pass from the stage of nations,
it will be, indeed, with her glory, but it will also be with
her shame. And, with shame, will her annals in
nothing more be loaded than in this. That while in
the actual possession of much relative freedom at
home, it has been her uniform characteristic to let fall
upon the remote subjects of her own empire, an iron
hand of harsh and vindictive power. If, as is alleged
in her eulogy, to touch her soil proclaims emancipa
tion to the slave, it is more true, that when her scep
tre reaches over that confined limit, it thenceforth, and
as it menacingly waves throughout the globe, inverts
the rule that would give to her soil this purifying vir
tue. Witness Scotland, towards whom her treatment,
until the union in the last century, was marked, during
the longest periods, by perfidious injustice or by rude
force, circumventing her liberties, or striving to cut
them down with the sword. Witness Ireland, who for
five centuries has bled, who, to the present hour, con
tinues to bleed, under the yoke of her galling supre
macy ; whose miserable victims seem at length to have
laid down, subdued arid despairing, under the multi
plied inflictions of her cruelty and rigor. In vain do
her own best statesmen and patriots remonstrate
against this unjust career ! in vain put forth the annu
al efforts of their benevolence, their zeal, their elo
quence; in vain touch every spring that interest, that
humanity, that the maxims of everlasting justice can
move, to stay its force and mitigate the fate of Irish
men. Alas, for the persecuted adherents of the cross
she leaves no hope ! Witness her subject millions in
the east, where, in the descriptive language of the
greatest of her surviving orators, " sacrilege, massa
cre and perfidy pile up the sombre pyramids of her re

nown."

ArOL. V. 31

238 MR. RUSH'S ORATION, AT

But, all these instances are of her fellow-men of
merely co-equal, perhaps unknown descent and blood ;
co-existing from all time with herself, and making up,
only accidentally, a part of her dominion. We ought
to have been spared. The otherwise undistinguishing
rigor of this outstretched sceptre might still have
spared us. We were descended from her own loins :
bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh ; not so much
a part of her empire as a part of herself— -her very self.
Towards her own it might have been expected she
would relent. When she invaded our homes, she
saw her own countenance, heard her own voice, be
held her own altars ! Where was then that pure spi
rit which she now would tell us sustains her amidst
self-sacrifices, in her generous contest for the liberties
of other nations ? If it flowed in her nature, here it
might have delighted to beam out ; here was space
for its saving love : the true mother chastens, not de
stroys the child : but Britain, when she struck at us,
struck at her own image, struck too at the immortal
principles which her Lockes, her Miltons, and her
Sidneys taught, and the fell blow severed us forever,
as a kindred nation ! The crime is purely her own ;
and upon her, not us, be its consequences and its stain.

In looking at Britain, with eyes less prepossessed
than we are apt to have from the circumstance of our
ancient connexion with her, we should see, indeed,
her common lot of excellence, on which to found es
teem ; but it would lift the covering from deformities
which may well startle and repel. A harshness of in
dividual character, in the general view of it, which is
perceived and acknowledged by all Europe ; a spirit
of unbecoming censure, as regards all customs and
institutions not th'eir own ; a ferocity in some of their
characteristics of national manners, pervading their
very pastimes, which no other modern people are en
dued with the blunted sensibility to bear: a univer
sally self-assumed superiority, not innocently manifest
ing itself in speculative sentiments among themselves,

WASHINGTON, JULY 4, 1812. 1239

but unamiably indulged when with foreigners of what
ever description in their own country, or when they
themselves are the temporary sojourners in a foreign
country ; a code of criminal law that forgets to feel
for human frailty, that sports with human misfortune,
that has shed more blood in deliberate judicial severi
ty for two centuries past — constantly increasing too
in its sanguinary hue — than has ever been sanctioned
by the jurisprudence of any ancient or modern nation,
civilized and refined like herself; the merciless whip
pings in her army, peculiar to herself alone ; the con
spicuous commission and freest acknowledgment of
vice in her upper classes; the overweening distinc
tions shown to opulence and birth, so destructive of
a sound moral sentiment in the nation, so baffling
to virtue. These are some of the traits that rise up
to a contemplation of the inhabitants of this isle, and
are adverted to, with an admission of qualities that
may spring up as the correlatives of some of them,
under the remark of our being prone to overlook the
vicious ingredients, while we so readily praise the good
that belongs to her.

How should it fall out, that this nation, more than
any other that is ambitious and warlike, should be
free from the dispositions that lead to injustice, vio
lence and plunder ; and what rules of prudence should
check our watchfulness or allay our fears, in regard to
the plans her conduct is the best illustration of her
having so steadily meditated towards us ? Why not
be girded as regards her attacks, wary as regards her
intrigues, alarmed as regards her habit of devastation
and long indulged appetite of blood ? Look at the
marine of Britain, its vast, its tremendous extent !
What potentate upon the earth wields a power that is
to be compared with it ? What potentate upon the
earth can move an apparatus of destruction so with
out rival, so little liable to any counteraction ? The
world, in no age, has seen its equal. It marks a new
era in the history of human force: an instrument of

240 MK. RUSH'S ORATION, AT

power and of ambition, with no limits to its rapid and
hideous workings but the waters and the winds.
Why should she impiously suppose the ocean to be
her own element? Why should she claim the right
to give law to it, any more than the eagle the exclu
sive right to fly in the air ? If ever there was a power
formidable to the liberties of other states, particularly
those afar off, is it not this ? If ever there was a
power which other states should feel warned to be
hold with fearful jealousy, and anxious to see broken
up, is it not this? The opinion inculcated by her
own interested politicians and journalists, that such a
force is designed to be employed only to mediate for
the rights of other nations, can hold no sway before
the unshackled reflections of a dispassionate mind.
All experience, all knowledge of man, explode the
supposition. So, more particularly, does the very
growth and history of this extraordinary power itself.
It has swelled to its gigantic size, not through any
concurrence of fortuitous or temporary causes, but
through long continued and the most systematic na
tional views. It was in the time of her early Edwards,
that she first began arrogantly to exact a ceremonious
obeisance from the flags of other nations, since which,
the entire spirit of her navigation laws, her commer
cial usages, her treaties, have steadily looked to the
establishment of an overruling marine. This is the
theme from which her poets insult the world by sing
ing, " Britannia's is the sea, and not a flag but by per
mission waves." It is the great instrument of annoy
ance in the hands of her ministers, with which they
threaten, or which they wield, to confirm allies, to
alarm foos, to make other states tributary to their
manufacturing, their commercial or their warlike
schemes. Even the multitude in their streets, their
boys, the halt and the blind, learn it in the ballads,
and at every carousal, " Rule Britannia" is the loud
acclamation, the triumphant echo of the scene ! The
end so long pursued with a constant view to unlimited

WASHINC4TON. JULY 4, 1812. 241

empire throughout that element which covers two
thirds of the globe, has been obtained, and Britain finds
herself, at this era, the dreaded mistress of the seas !
With what rapacious sway she has begun to put forth
this arm of her supremacy, we, fellow-citizens, have
experienced, while the flames of Copenhagen have
lighted it up to Europe in characters of a more awful
glare.

When the late Colonel Henry Laurensleft England,
in the year 1774, he had previously waited on the Earl
of Hillsborough, in order to converse with him on
American affairs. In the course of conversation Colo
nel Laureris said, the duty of three pence a pound on
tea, and all the other taxes, were not worth the expense
of a war. " You mistake the cause of our controversy
with your country," said his lordship : " You spread
too much canvass upon the ocean; do you think we
will let you go on with your navigation, and your forty
thousand seamen ?"* The same hostile spirit to our
growing commerce has actuated every minister, and
every privy council, and every parliament of Great
Britain since that time ; and it is the spirit she mani
fests towards other nations. The recent declarations,
made upon the floor of the House of Commons in de
bate upon the orders in council, add a new corrobora-
tion to the proofs that this monopolizing spirit has been
one of the steady maxims designed to secure and up
hold her absolute dominion upon the waves. But to
that Being who made the waters and the winds for the
common use of his creatures, do we owe it never to
forego our equal claim to their immunities.

In entering upon a war it is our chief consolation —
that will give dignity to the contest and confidence to
our hearts ; to know that before God and before the
world, our cause is just. To dilate on this head, al
though so fruitful, would swell to undue limits this ad-

* The writer derived this anecdote through one of our principal
statesmen who has been abroad.

242 MR. RUSH'S ORATION, AT

dress, and betray 'a forgetfulness of the informed and
anticipating understandings of this assembly. Our
provocation consists of multiplied wrongs, of the most
numerous injuries, of the most aggravated insults. They
have been fully placed before the world in the recent
authentic declarations of our government. In these
declarations will be read the solemn justification of
what we have done, and our posterity will cling to
them as a manly, yet pure and unblemished portion of
their inheritance. In the language of one of them
flowing from the highest and the purest source, found
ed on authentic history, and which exhibits a state pa
per alike distinguished by its profound reasoning, its
elevated justice, and its impressive dignity, we have
" beheld, in fine, on the side of Great Britain a state of
war against the United States; and, on the side of the
United States, a state of peace towards Great Bri
tain." It is the same pen,* too, which has been offi
cially employed for so many years in combatting our
wrongs and striving for their pacific redress, with a con
stant and sublime adherence to the maxims of univer
sal equity as well as of public law, which now solemn
ly declares our actual situation. Can Americans then
hesitate what part to act ? Whither would have fled
the remembrance of their character and deeds?
Whither soon would flee their rights, their liberties ?
Where would be the spirits, where the courage, of
their slain fathers? Snatched and gone from ignoble
sons ! What should we answer to the children we
leave behind, who will take their praise or their re
proach, from the conduct of their sires — and those
sires republicans ! Who, rejecting from the train of
their succession the perishing honors of a riband or a
badge, are more nobly inspired to transmit the unfading
distinctions that spring from the resolute discharge of
all the patriot's high duties ! Why should we stay our
arm against Britain while she wars upon us ; are we

* Mr.- Madison's— then President of the United. States.

WASHINGTON, JULY 4, 1812. 243

appalled at her legions ; do we shrink back at her ven
geance? No, fellow-citizens, no! we have faced
those legions, braved and triumphed over that ven
geance. Powerful as she is, old in arms and in disci
pline, upon the plains of America has she once learned
that her ranks can be subdued and her high ensign fall.
Not in a boastful, but in a temper to encourage, would
we speak it, British valor has yielded to the equal,
spontaneous valor, but the more indignant fire which
freedom and a just cause could impart, when opposed
to the hired forces of an unjust king. And is there
less to inspire now ? Let a few short reflections deter
mine.

While I abstain from any enumeration of the other
encroachments of Great Britain upon us as an inde
pendent nation, through their successive accumula
tions until they have ended in making the whole trade
of our country in substance and in terms colonial, suf
fering it to exist, and to exist only, where it subserves
her own absorbing avarice, or what she calls her re
taliating vengeance, I must nevertheless solicit your
indulgence to pause with me, for a little while, upon a
single wrong.

The seizure of the persons of American citizens un*
der the name and the pretexts of impressment, by the
naval officers of Great Britain, is an outrage of that
kind which makes it difficult to speak of it in terms of
appropriate description ; for this, among other reasons,
that the offence itself is new. It is probable that the
most careful researches into history, where indeed of
almost every form of rapine between men and between
nations is to be found the melancholy record, will yet
afford no example of the systematic perpetration of an
offence of a similar nature, perpetrated, too, under a
claim of right. To take a just and no other than a
serious illustration, the only parallel to it is to be found
in the African slave trade ; and if an eminent states
man of England once spoke of the latter, as the great
est practical evil that had ever afflicted mankind, we

244 MR. RUSH'S ORATION, AT

may be allowed to denominate the former the greatest
practical offence that has ever been offered to a civiliz
ed and independent state. With the American gov
ernment it has been a question of no party or of no
day. At every period of its administration, the odious
practice has been constantly protested against, and its
discontinuance been demanded under every form of
pacific remonstrance. With all our statesmen, while
engaged in exercising the public authorities of the na
tion, it has been deemed, if not otherwise to have been
abrogated, legitimate cause of war. The only ima
ginable difference among any of them, has been, as to
the time when it would be proper to use this imperi
ous resort; as if the time was not always at hand for a
nation to redeem such a stain upon its vitals, and as if
an encroachment of this nature does not become the
more difficult to beat back with each year, and with
each instance, in which it is permitted. But it best
accorded with the genius of our government, with its
love of peace, and perhaps with what was due to
peace, to attempt at first its pacific removal. General
Washington, when at the head of the government, is
known to have viewed it with the sensibility that such
an indignity could not fail to arouse in his bosom, and
had he lived until this day to see it not only unredress-
ed and unmitigated, but increased, amidst all the ami
cable efforts on our part for its cessation, there is the
strongest reason for supposing that his just estimate
of the nation's welfare, that his lofty and gallant spirit,
would have stood forth, had it been but the single
grievance, the manly advocate for its extirpation by
the sword. But if our submission to it so long has in
curred a just reproach, happily it is in some measure
assuaged in the reflection that our forbearance will
serve to put us more completely in the right at this
eventful period.

That our enemy has invariably refused to accede to
such terms as were answerable to the indispensable
expectations of our own government, as the organ of a

WASHINGTON, JULY 4, 1812. 246

sovereign people, upon this head, is a point suscepti-
ble of entire proof. Avoiding other particulars, it will
be sufficient to introduce a single one. It is a fact,
which the archives of our public departments will show,
that in order to take from Great Britain the remnant
of her own excuses for seizing our men under the pre-
text, at all times disallowable, of invading the sanctua-
ry of our ships in search of her own, it was proposed to
her, that the United States would forbear to receive
her seamen on board of their vessels, provided she, in
her turn, would abstain from receiving our men on
board of hers. This would wholly have destroyed the
insulting claim, set up by her, to break in with armed
men upon our vessels while peaceably sailing on the
ocean under color of forcibly taking her own mari-
ners ; for, the regulation, if adopted, would have given
the previous assurance that her own were not there to
be found. But this proposal, it is also a fact, she de-
clined. As rapacious of men, as greedy of riches and
grasping at dominion, she neglected to avail herself of
a regulation that would curtail her in this new species
of plunder ; this plunder in the flesh and blood of free-
men, of which she has afforded the first example, in
all time, to the eyes of an insulted world. But it forci-
bly marks the devouring ambition of her naval spirit ;
and that if public law is ridiculed, justice scoffed at,
sovereignty prostrated, and humanity made to shudder
and to groan ; still, her ships must have men.

Under a mere personal view of this outrage, and
considering it on the footing of a moral sin, it is strict-
ly like the African slave trade. Like that it breaks up
families and causes hearts to bleed. Like that it tears
the son from the father, the father from the son. Like
that it makes orphans and widows, takes the brother
from the sister, seizes up the young man in the health
of his days arid blasts his hopes forever. It is worse
than the slavery of the African, for the African is only
made to work under the lash of a task-master, whereas
the citizen of the United States, thus enslaved, receives

VOL. v. 32

246 MR. RUSH'S ORATION, AT

also the lash on the slightest lapses from a rigorous dis-
cipline, and is moreover exposed to the bitter fate of
fighting against those towards whom he has no hostili-
ty, perhaps his own countrymen, it may be, his own im-
mediate kindred. This is not exaggeration, fellow-
citizens, it is reality and fact.

But, say the British, we want not your men; we
want only our own. Prove that they are yours and
we will surrender them up. Baser outrage! insolent
indignity ! that a free born American must be made to
prove his nativity to those who have previously violat-
ed his liberty, else he is to be held forever as a slave !
That before a British tribunal, a British boarding offi-
cer, a free born American must be made to seal up
the vouchers of his lineage, to exhibit the records of
his baptism and his birth, to establish the identity that
binds him to his parents, to his blood, to his native
land, by setting forth in odious detail his size, his age.
the shape of his frame, whether his hair is long or
cropt, his marks, like an ox or a horse of the manger ;
that all this must be done as the condition of his es-
cape from the galling thraldom of a British ship ! Can
we hear it, can we think of it, with any other than in-
dignant feelings at our tarnished name and nation?
And suppose through this degrading process his deli-
verance to be effected, where is he to seek redress for
the intermediate wrong? The unauthorized seizure
and detention of any piece of property, a mere tres-
pass upon goods, will always lay the foundation for
some, often the heaviest retribution, in every well
regulated society. But to whom, or where, shall our
imprisoned citizen, when the privilege of shaking off
his fetters has at last been accorded to him, turn for his
redress ? where look to reimburse the stripes, perhaps
the wounds he has received ; his worn spirit, his long
inward agonies ? No, the public code of nations re-
cognizes not the penalty, for to the modern rapacious-
ness of Britain it was reserved to add to the dark cata-
logue of human sufferings this flagitious crime.

WASHINGTON, JULY 4, 1812. 24t

But why be told that, even on such proofs, our citi-
zens will be released from their captivity ? We have
long and sorely experienced the impracticable nature
of this boon which, in the imagined relaxation of her
deep injustice, she would affect to hold out. Go to
the office of the department of state, within sight of
where we are assembled, and there see the piles of
certificates and documents, of affidavits, records and
seals, anxiously drawn out and folded up, to show
why Americans should not be held as slaves, and see
how they rest, and will forever rest, in hopeless neglect
upon the shelves ! Some defect in form, some impos-
sibility of filling up all the crevices which British ex-
action insists upon being closed ; the uncertainty, if,
after all, they will ever reach their point of destination,
the climate or the sea where the hopes of gain or
the lust of conquest are impelling, through constant
changes, their ships; the probability that the misera-
ble individual, to whom they are intended as the har-
binger of liberation from his shackles, may have been
translated from the first scene of his incarceration to
another, from a seventyfour to a sixtyfour, from a
sixtyfour to a frigate, and thus through rapid, if not
designed mutations, a practice which is known to-
exist; these are obvious causes of discouragement, by
making the issue at all times doubtful, most frequently
hopeless. And this Great Britain cannot but know.
She does know it, and, with deliberate mockery, in
the composure with which bloated power can scoff at
submissive and humble suffering, has she continued
to increase and protract our humiliation as well as our
suffering, by renewals of the visionary offer.

Again it is said, that our citizens resemble their
men, look like them in their persons, speak the same
language, that discriminations are difficult or imprac-
ticable, and therefore it is they are unavoidably seiz-
ed. Most insulting excuse ! And will they impeach
that God who equally made us both, who forms our
features, moulds our statures and stamps us with a

248 MR. RUSH'S ORATION, AT

countenance that turns up to his goodness in adora-
tion arid love ? Impious as well as insulting ! The
leopard cannot change his spots or the Ethiopian his
skin, but we, we, are to put off our bodies and become
unlike ourselves as the price of our safety ! Why
should similarity of face yoke us exclusively with an
ignominious burden? Why, because we were once
descended from them, should we be made at this day,
and forever, to clank chains ? Suppose one of their
subjects landed upon our shores — let us suppose him a
prince of their blood — shall we seize upon him to mend
our highways, shall we draft him for our ranks ? Shall
we subject him in an instant to all the civil burdens
of duty, of taxation, of every species of aid and service
that grow out of the allegiance of the citizen, until he
can send across the ocean for the registers of his fami-
ly and birth ? What has her foul spirit of impress-
ment to answer to this ? Why not equally demand on
our part, that every one of her factors, who lands upon
our soil, should bring a protection in his pocket, or
hang one round his neck, as the price of his safety r
If this plea of monstrous outrage be, only for one in-
stant, admitted, remember, fellow-citizens, that it be-
comes as lasting as monstrous. If our children, and
our children's children, and their children, continue to
speak the same tongue, to hold the same port with
their fathers, they also will be liable to this enslave-
ment, and the groaning evil be co-existent with British
power, British rapacity, and the maxim, that the Bri-
tish navy must have men ! If our men are like theirs,
it should form, to any other than a nation callous to
justice, dead to the moral sense, and deliberately bent
upon plunder, the very reason why they should give up
the practice, seeing that it is intrinsically liable to these
mistakes, and that the exercise of what they call a
right on their part necessarily brings with it the most
high-handed wrongs to us.

I am a Roman citizen, I am a Roman citizen ! wa?
an exclamation that insured safety, commanded rr-

WASHINGTON, JULY 4, 1812. 249

spect, or inspired terror, in all parts of the world.
And although the mild temper of our government
exacts not all these attributes, we may, at least, be
suffered to deplore with hearts of agony and shame,
that while the inhabitants of every other part of the
globe enjoy an immunity from the seizure of their per-
sons, except under the fate of war, or by acknowledged
pirates — even the wretched Africans of late — to be an
American citizen has, for five and twenty years, been
the signal for insult and the passport to captivity.
Let it not be replied, that the men, they take from us,
are sometimes not of a character or description to
attract the concern or interposition of the government.
If they were all so, it lessens in nowise the enormity of
the outrage. It adds, indeed, a fresh indignity to men-
tion it. The sublime equality of justice recognizes
no such distinctions, and a government, founded upon
the great basis of equal right, would forget one of its
fundamental duties, if in the exercise of its protecting
power it admits to a foreign nation the least distinc-
tion between what it owes to the lowest and meanest,
and the highest and most exalted of its citizens.

Sometimes it is said that but few of our seamen are
in reality seized ! Progressive and foul aggravation !
to admit the crime to our faces and seek to screen its
atrocity under its limited extent. Whence but from a
source hardened with long rapine, could such a pallia-
tion flow ? It is false. The files of that same depart-
ment, its melancholy memorials, attest that there are
thousands of oui* countrymen at this moment in slave-
ry in their ships. And if there were but one hundred,
if there were but fifty, if there were but ten, if there
were but one— how dare they insult a sovereign nation
with such an answer ? Shall I state to you a fact, fel-
low-citizens, that will be sufficient to rouse not simply
your indignation, but your horror, and would that I
could speak it at this moment to the whole nation, that
every American, who has a heart to be inflamed with
honest resentment, might hear; a fact that shows all

250 MR. RUSH'S ORATION; AT

the excess of shame that should flush our faces at sub-
mission to an outrage so foul. I state to you upon the
highest and most unquestionable authority, that two
of the nephews of your immortal Washington have
been seized, dragged, made slaves of on board of a
British ship! Will it be credited? It is nevertheless
true. They were kept in slavery more than a year,
and as the transactions of your government will show,
were restored to liberty only a few months since.*
How, Americans, can you sit down under such indigni-
ties ? To which of their princes, which of their no-
bles, to which of their ministers, or which of their re-
gents, will you allow, in the just pride of men and of free-
men, that those who stand in consanguinity to the illus-
trious founder of your liberties, are second in all their
claims to safety and protection ? But we must leave the
odious subject. It swells, indeed, with ever fruitful ex-
pansion, to the indignant view, but while it animates
it is loathsome. If the English say it is merely an abuse
incident to a right on their part, besides denying for-
ever the foundation of such right where it goes to the
presumptuous entry of our own vessels with their arm-
ed men, shall we tolerate its exercise for an instant
when manifestly attended with such a practical, un-
ceasing, and enormous oppression upon ourselves ?

This crime of impressment may justly be consider-
ed— posterity will so consider it — as transcending the
amount of all the other wrongs we have received.
Notwithstanding the millions which the cupidity of
Britain has wrested from us, the millions which the
cupidity of France has wrested from us, including her
wicked burnings of our ships ; adding also the wrongs
from Spain and Denmark ; the sum of all should be
estimated below this enormity. Ships and merchan-
dize belong to individuals, and may be valued ; may

* They were the sons of the late Fielding Lewis, of Virginia, who
was immediate nephew to General Washington, for all which see the
papers on file in the office of the Secretary of State.

WASHINGTON, JULY 4, 1812. 251

be endured as subjects of negotiation. But men are
the property of the nation. ' In every American face a
part of our country's sovereignty is written. It is the
living emblem ; a thousand times more sacred than
the nation's flag itself; of its character, its independ-
ence and its rights ; its quick and most dearly cherish-
ed insignium — towards which the nation should ever
demand the most scrupulous and inviolable immunity.
Man was created in his Maker's own image — " in the
image of God created he him." When he is made a
slave, where shall there be reimbursement ? No, fel-
low-citizens, under the assistance and protection of the
Most High, the evil must be stopped. His own image
must not be enslaved. It was deservedly the first
enumerated of our grievances in the late solemn
message from the first magistrate of our land; on the
eighteenth of June of this memorable year we appealed
to the sword and to heaven against it, and we shall be
wanting to ourselves, to our posterity ; we shall never
stand erect in our sovereignty as a nation if we return
it to the scabbard until such an infamy and curse are
removed. The blessings of peace itself become a
curse, a foul curse, while such a stain is permitted to
rest upon our annals. Never, henceforth, must Ameri-
can ships be converted into worse than butchers' sham-
bles for the inspection and seizure of human flesh !
We would appeal to the justice and humanity of their
own statesmen, claim the interference of their Wilber-
forces ; invoke the spirit of their departed Fox ; call
upon all among them, who nobly succeeded in their
long struggles against the African slave trade, to stand
up and retrieve the British name from the equal odium
of this offence.

If it be true that injuries, long acquiesced in, lose the
power of exciting sensibility, it may be remarked, in
conclusion of this hateful subject, how forcibly verified
it is in the instance of robbing us of our citizens.
When it happens that some of them are surrendered
up, on examination and allowance of the proofs, it is

252 MR. RUSH'S ORATION, AT

not unusual to advert to it as an indication of the jus-
tice and generosity of the British! The very act,
which, to an abstract judgment, should be taken as
stamping a seal upon the outrage, by the acknowledg-
ment it implies from themselves of the atrocity, be-
cause the unlawfulness of the seizure, is thus con-
verted into a medium of homage and of praise ! In-
verted patriotism ! drooping, downcast, honor ! to de-
rive a pleasurable sensation from the insulting confes-
sion of a crime !

Next to a just war, fellow-citizens, we wage a de-
fensive one. This is its true and only character.
Our fields were not, indeed, invaded, or our towns en-
tered and sacked. But still it is purely a war of de-
fence. It was to stop reiterated encroachment we
took up arms. Persons, property, rights, character,
sovereignty, justice, all these were contumaciously in-
vaded at our hands. Let impartial truth say, if it were
for ambition, or conquest, or plunder, or through any
false estimate of character, or pride that we appealed
to the sword. No, Americans ! No ! Republicans,
there will rest no such blot upon your moderate, your
pacific councils. It is an imperfect view of this ques-
tion which considers as a defensive war, only that
which is entered upon when the assailant is bursting
through your doors and levelling the musket at the
bosoms of your women and children. Think how a
nation may be abridged, may be dismantled of its
rights, may be cut down in its liberties, this side of an
open attack. The Athenian law punished seduction of
female honor more severely than it did force. And the
nation, that would adopt it as a maxim to lie by under
whatever curtailments of its sovereignty, resolving
upon no resistance until the actual investment of its
soil, might find itself too fatally trenched upon, too ex-
hausted in resources, or too enfeebled in spirit, to
rouse itself when the foe was rushing through the
gates.

The war-whoop of the Indian had, indeed, been

WASHINGTON, JULY 4, 1812.

heard in the habitations of our frontier ; and it is im-
possible to abstain from imputing to the agency of our
enemy this horrid species of invasion. Their hand
must be in it. For although it may not be directly in-
stigated by thejr government on the other side of the
water, yet past proofs make it to the last degree proba-
ble that the intrigues of their sub-agents in the Cana-
das are instrumental to the wickedness. Nor will a ra-
tional mind hesitate to infer, that the same spirit which,
from that quarter at least, could send, for the most ne-
farious purposes, a polished spy through our cities,
would also, varying the form of its iniquity, let loose
upon us the hatchet and the scalping knife. Great
Britain, indeed, had not declared war against us in
form, but she had made it upon us in fact. She had
plundered us of our property, she had imprisoned our
citizens ; nor can any accommodation now erase from
our memories, although it may from our public discus-
sions, the bloody memorials of her attack upon the
Chesapeake.

Since, fellow-citizens, that through all these motives
a war with Britain has been forced upon us, while bear-
ing up, against whatever of pressure it may bring, with
the energy and the hope of our fathers, let us deduce
also this of consolation: that it will, more than any
thing else, have a tendency to break the sway which
that nation is enabled to hold over us. I would ad-
dress myself on this point to the candid minds of our
countrymen, and to all such among them as have bo-
soms penetrated with a genuine love for our republican
systems. We form, probably for the first time in all
history, the instance of a nation descended, and politi-
cally detached from another, but still keeping up the most
intimate connexions with the original and once parent
stock. The similarity of our mariners and customs; our
language be,ing one, and our religion nearly one ; the
entire identity in individual appearance, and in all things
else, which is spread before the American and the
English eye; our boundless social intercommunica-

VOT, v. ' 33

254 MR. RUSH'S ORATION, -A'l

tion; the very personal respectability, in so many in-
stances, of those of that nation who, in such numbers,
come to this ; pecuniary connexions so universal and
unlimited ; dependent upon her loom, dependent upon
her fashions, dependent upon her judicature, depen-
dent upon her drama .- reading none but her books, or
scarcely any others ; taking up her character and ac-
tions chiefly at the hands of her own annalists or pane-
gyrists ; nothing in fine that comes from that quarter
being regarded as foreign, but as well her inhabitants
as her modes of life and all her usages, being taken to
be as of our own ; these complicated similitudes ope-
rate like clamps and holdings to bind us insensibly to
her sides, yielding to her an easy, an increasing, and
an unsuspected ascendency.

It may be said this is an advantageous ascendency ;
that, as a young people, we may profit of the intimacy,
have her arts and her manners copy her many melio-
rations of existence, eat of her intellectual food and get
stamina the more quickly upon its nourishment. But
stop Americans ! do you not know that this same peo-
ple are the subjects of an old and luxurious monarchy,
with all the corrupt attachments to which it leads ; that
if not their duty, it is naturally their practice to breathe
the praise and inculcate the love of their own forms of
polity ? Do you not know, that if not the correlative
duty, it is, as certainly, their correlative practice, to
deal out disapprobation, even contempt for our own,
and the habits which alone they should superinduce ?
And is there not cause for apprehension that the supe-
riority, which we so easily, often so slavishly, choose to
yield her on all other points, that the moral prostra-
tion in which we consent to fall before her footstool,
may also trench upon the reverence due to our own
public institutions, producing results at which all our
fears should startle ? If, fellow-citizens, our freedom,
our republican freedom, which, to make lasting, we
should cherish with uninterrupted constancy and the
purest love, has a foe more deadly than any other, it is

WASHINGTON, JULY 4, 1812. 255

probably this ; this is the destroying spirit which can
make its way slowly and unperceived, but surely and
fatally. If we stood further off, much further off, from
Britain, we should still be near enough to derive all
that she has valuable, while we should be more safe
from the poison of her political touch. Just as, at
this day, we can draw upon the repositories of genius
and literature among the ancients, while we escape the
vices of paganism and the errors of their misleading
philosophy. But if Athenian citizens filled our towns;
if we spoke their language, wore their dress, took them
to our homes ; if we kept looking up to them with ge-
neral imitation and subserviency, the truths of Chris-
tianity themselves would be in danger of yielding to
the adoration of the false gods!

This war may produce, auspiciously and forever,
the effect of throwing us at a safer distance from so
contaminating an intimacy, making our. liberty thrive
more securely, and ourselves more independent — pri-
vately and politically. From no other nation are we
in danger in the same way ; for, with no other nation,
have we the same affinities, but, on the contrary, nu-
merous points of repulsion that interpose as our guard.
Let us have a shy connexion with them all, for histo-
ry gives the admonition, that for the last twenty years,
every nation of the world that has come too close in
friendship with either our present enemy, or her neigh-
bor, the ferocious giant of the land, has lost its liber-
ties, been prostrated, or been ravaged. After the war
of our revolution, we were still so much in the feeble-
ness of youth as to take the outstretched hand of Bri-
tain, who could establish our industry, shape our oc-
cupations, and give them, involuntarily to ourselves,
the direction advantageous to her views. But, hence-
forth, we shall stand upon a pedestal whose base is
fixed among ourselves, whence we may proudly look
around and afar — from the ocean to the mountains,
from the mountains to the farthest west, beholding
our fruitful fields, listening to the hammer of our work-

t

;>56 MR. RUSH'S ORATION, AT

shops, the cheerful noise of our looms : where the
view, on all sides, of native numbers, opulence and
skill, will enable us to stamp more at pleasure the fu-
ture destinies of our happy land. Possibly, also, the
sameness of our pursuits in so many things, with Bri-
tain, instead of pointing to close connexions with her,
as her politicians so steadily hold up, will at length
indicate to the foresight of our own statesmen unal-
terable reasons to an intercourse more restrained — it
may be the elements of a lasting rivalship.

Animated by all the motives which demand and
justify this contest, let us advance to it with resolute
and high beating hearts, supported by the devotion to
our beloved country, which wishes for her triumphs
cannot fail to kindle. Dear to us is this beloved coun-
try, far dearer than we can express, for all the true
blessings that flourish within her bosom ; the country
of our fathers, the country of our children, the scene
of our dearest affections — whose rights and liberties
have been consecrated by the blood whose current
runs so fresh in our own veins. Who shall touch
such a country, and not fire the patriotism and
unsheath the swords of us all ? No, Americans !
while you reserve your independent privilege of ren-
dering, at all times, your suffrages as you please, let
our proud foe be undeceived. Let her, let the world
learn, now and forever, that the voice of our nation,
when once legitimately expressed, is holy — is impe-
rious ! that it is a summons of duty to every citizen ;
that when we strike at a foreign foe, the sacred bond
of country becomes the pledge of a concentrated ef-
fort ; that in such a cause, and at such a crisis, we
feel with but one heart and strike with our whole
strength ! We are the only nation in the world, fel-
low-citizens, where the people and the government
stand, in all things, identified ; where all the acts of
the latter are immediately submitted to the superior
revision of the former ; where every blow at the gene-
ral safety becomes the personal concern of each indi-

WASHINGTON, JULY 4, 1812, 257

vidual. Happy people, happy government ! will you
give up, will you not defend such blessings ? We are
also perhaps the only genuine republic which, since
the days of the ancients, has taken up arms against a
foreign foe in defence of its rights and its liberties.
Animating thought ! warmed with the fire of ancient
freedom, may we not expect to see the valor of Ther-
mopylae and Marathon again displayed ? The Con-
gress of eighteen hundred and twelve, here, within
these august walls, have proclaimed to the world that
other feelings than those of servility, avarice, or fear,
pervade the American bosom ; that in the hope and pu-
rity of youth, we are not debased by the passions of a
corrupt old age ; that our sensibilities are other than
sordid ; that we are ambitious of the dignified port of
freemen ; that while pacific we know the value of na-
tional rights and national justice, and with the spirit,
due to our lasting prosperity as a republic, design to
repel authenticated outrages upon either. That we
will and dare act as becomes a free, an enlightened,
and a brave people. Illustrious Congress ! worthy to
have your names recounted with the illustrious fa-
thers of our revolution ! for what grievances were
those that led to the great act which made us a na-
tion, that have not been equalled, shall I say have not
been surpassed, by those which moved to your deed ?
And what noble hazards did they encounter which you
ought not to brave ?

If we are not fully prepared for war, let the sublime
spectacle be soon exhibited, that a free and a valiant
nation, with our numbers, and a just cause, is always
a powerful nation ; is always ready to defend its essen-
tial rights ! The Congress of '76 declared Independ-
ence and hurled defiance at this same insatiate foe,
six and thirty years ago, with an army of seventeen
thousand ^hostile troops just landed upon our shores;
and shall we now hesitate ? Shall we bow our necks
in submission, shall we make an ignominious surrender
of our birthright under the plea that we are not pre-

258 MR. RUSH'S ORATION, AT

pared to defend it ? No, Americans ! Yours has
been a pacific republic, and therefore has not exhibit-
ed military preparation ; but it is a €ree republic, and
therefore will it now, as, before, soon command bat-
talions, discipline, courage ! Could a general of old
by only stamping on the earth raise up armies, and
shall a whole nation of freemen, at such a time, know
not where to look for them ? The soldiers of Bunker's
hill, the soldiers of Bennington, the soldiers of the
Wabash, the seamen of Tripoli contradict it !

By one of the surviving patriots of our revolution I
have been told, that in the Congress of 1774, among
other arguments used to prevent a war, and separa-
tion from Great Britain, the danger of having our
towns battered down and burnt was zealously urged.
The venerable Christopher Gadsden, of South Caroli-
na, rose and replied to it in these memorable words :
" Our seaport towns, Mr. President, are composed of
brick and wood. If they are destroyed, we have clay
and timber enough in our country to rebuild them.
But, if the liberties of our country are destroyed, where
shall we find the materials to replace them ?" Be-
hold in this an example of virtuous sentiment fit to be
imitated.

Indulge me with another illustration of American
patriotism, derived from the same source. During the
siege at Boston, general Washington consulted Con-
gress upon the propriety of bombarding the town.
Mr. Hancock was then President of Congress. Af-
ter general Washington's letter was read, a solemn
silence ensued. This was broken by a member mak-
ing ,a motion that the House should resolve itself into
a committee of the whole, in order that Mr. Hancock
might give his opinion upon the important subject, as
he was so deeply interested from having all his estate
in Boston. After he left the chair, he addressed the
chairman of the committee of the whole in the follow-
ing words : « It is true, sir, nearly all the property I
have in the world is in houses and other real estate in

WASHINGTON, JULY 4, 1812. 259

the town of Boston ; but if the expulsion of the British
army from it, and the liberties of our country require
their being burnt to ashes, issue the order for that pur-
pose immediately."

What has ancient or modern story to boast beyond
such elevated specimens of public virtue ; and what in-
spiring lessons of duty do they teach to us ? War, fel-
low-citizens, is not the greatest of evils. Long sub-
mission to injustice is worse. Peace, a long peace, a
peace purchased by mean and inglorious sacrifices, is
worse, is far worse. War takes away a life destined
by nature to death. It produces chiefly bodily evils.
But when ignoble peace robs us of virtue, debases the
mind and chills its best feelings, it renders life a living
death, and makes us offensive above ground. The
evils of ignoble peace are, an inordinate love of mo-
ney ; rage of party spirit ; and a willingness to endure
even slavery itself, rather than bear pecuniary depriva-
tions or brave manly hazards. The states of Holland
and of Italy will be found, at several stages of their
history, strikingly to exemplify this remark.

War in a just cause produces patriotism : witness
the speech of Gadsderi ! It produces the most noble
disinterestedness where our country is concerned:
witness the speech of Hancock ! It serves to destroy
party spirit, which may become worse than war. In
war death is produced without personal hatred ; but
under the influence of party spirit inflamed by the sor-
did desires of an inglorious peace, the most malignant
passions are generated, and we hate with the spirit of
murderers.

Could the departed heroes of the revolution rise from
their sleep and behold their descendants hanging con-
tentedly over hoards of money, or casting up British
invoices, -while so long a list of wrongs still looked
them in the face, calling for retribution, what would
they say ? Would they not hasten back to their tombs,
now more welcome than ever, since they would con-

ifi

260 MR. RUSH'S ORATION, AT

ceal from their view the base conduct of those sons
for whom they so gallantly fought, and so gallantly
fell? But stop, return, return, illustrious band! stay
and behold, stay and applaud what we too are doing !
we will not dishonor your noble achievements, we
will defend the inheritance you bequeathed us, we
will wipe away all past stains, we will maintain our
rights at the sword, or, like you, we will die ! Then
shall we render our ashes worthy to mingle with
yours.

Sacred in our celebrations be this day to the end of
time ! Revered be the memories of the statesmen and
orators whose wisdom led to the act of Independence,
and of the gallant soldiers who sealed it with their
blood ! May the fires of their genius and courage ani-
mate and sustain us in our contest, and bring it to a
like glorious result ! May it be carried on with single-
ness to the objects that alone summoned us to it; as
a great and imperious duty, irksome yet necessary !
May there be a willing, a joyful, immolation of all sel-
fish passions on the altar of a common country ! May
the hearts of our combatants be bold, and, under a
propitious heaven, their swords flash victory ! May a
speedy peace bless us and the passions of war go off.
leaving in their place a stronger love of.country and of
each other ! Then may pacific glories, accumulating
and beaming from the excitement of the national mind,
long be ours ; a roused intellect, a spirit of patriot-
ic improvement in whatever can gild the American
name ; in arts, in literature, in science, in manufac-
tures, in agriculture, in legislation, in morals, in imbuing
our admirable forms of polity with still more and more
perfection ; may these then and long be ours ! may
common perils and common triumphs bind us more
closely together ! may the era furnish names to our an-
nals "on whom late time a kindling eye shall turn!"
Revered be the dust of those who fall, sweet their
memories ! — their country vindicated, their duty done,

WASHINGTON, JULY 4, 1812. 261

an honorable renown, the regrets of a nation, the
eulogies of friendship, the slow and moving dirges
of the camp, the tears of beauty — all, all, will sanctify
their doom ! Honored be those who outlive the strife
of arms ! our rights established, justice secured, a
haughty foe taught to respect the freemen she had
abused and plundered; to survive to such recollections
and such a consciousness, is there, can there be, a
nobler reward !

VOL. v. 34

AN ORATION,

PRONOUNCED

AT CAMBRIDGE, BEFORE THE SOCIETY OF PHI BETA
KAPPA, AUGUST 26, 1824 :

BY EDWARD EVERETT.

MR. PRESIDENT, AND GENTLEMEN,

IN discharging the honorable trust of being the pub-
lic organ of your sentiments on this occasion, I have
been anxious that the hour, which we here pass to-
gether, should be occupied by those reflections exclu-
sively, which belong to us as scholars. Our associa-
tion in this fraternity is academical ; we engaged in
it before our alma mater dismissed us from her vene-
rable roof, to wander in the various paths of life ; and
we have now come together in the academical holi-
days, from every variety of pursuit, from almost every
part of our country, to meet on common ground, as
the brethren of one literary household. The profes-
sional cares of life, like the conflicting tribes of Greece,
have proclaimed to us a short armistice, that we may
come up in peace to our Olympia.

But from the wide field of literary speculation, and
the innumerable subjects of meditation which arise
in it, a selection must be made. And it has seemed
to me proper, that we should direct our thoughts, not
merely to a subject of interest to scholars, but to one,
which may recommend itself as peculiarly appropriate
to us. If ' that old man eloquent, whom the dishonest
victory at Cheronaea killed with report,' could devote
fifteen years to the composition of his Panegyric on
Athens, I shall need no excuse to a society of Ameri-
can scholars, in choosing for the theme of an address,

MR. EVERETT'S ORATION, &c. 263

on an occasion like this, the peculiar motives to in-
tellectual exertion in America. In this subject that
curiosity, which every scholar feels in tracing and
comparing the springs of mental activity, is heighten-
ed and dignified, by the important connexion of the
inquiry with the condition and prospects of our native
land.

In the full comprehension of the terms, the motives
to intellectual exertion in a country embrace the most
important springs of national character. Pursued into
its details, the study of these springs of national
character is often little better than fanciful specula-
tion. The questions, why Asia has almost always been
the abode of despotism; and Europe more propitious
to liberty ; why the Egyptians were abject and melan-
choly; the Greeks inventive, elegant and versatile;
the Romans stern, saturnine, and, in matters of litera-
ture, for the most part servile imitators of a people,
whom they conquered, despised, and never equalled ;
why tribes of barbarians from the north and east, not
known to differ essentially from each other, at the
time of their settlement in Europe, should have laid
the foundation of national characters so dissimilar, as
those of the Spanish, French, German, and English
nations ; these are questions to which a few general
answers may be attempted, that will probably be just
and safe, only in proportion as they are vague and
comprehensive. Difficult as it is, even in the individu-
al man, to point out precisely the causes, under the in-
fluence of which members of the same community and
of the same family, placed apparently in the same cir-
cumstances, grow up with characters the most diverse;
it is infinitely more difficult to perform the same analy-
sis on a subject so vast as a nation ; where it is first
not a small question what the character is, before you
touch the inquiry into the circumstances by which it
was formed.

But as, in the case of individual character, there
are certain causes of undisputed and powerful opera-

204 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

tion ; there are also in national character causes
equally undisputed of improvement and excellence,
on the one hand, and of degeneracy and decline, on
the other. The philosophical student of history, the
impartial observer of man, may often fix on circum-
stances, which, in their operation on the minds of the
people, in furnishing the motives and giving the direc-
tion to intellectual exertion, have had the chief agency
in making them what they were or are. Nor are there
many exercises of the speculative principle more ele-
vated than this. It is in the highest degree curious to
trace physical facts into their political, intellectual and
moral consequences ; and to show how the climate,
the geographical position, and even the particular to-
pography of a region connect themselves by evident
association, with the state of society, its predominating
pursuits, and characteristic institutions.

In the case of other nations, particularly of those
which in the great drama of the world have long since
passed from the stage, these speculations are often
only curious. The operation of a tropical climate in
enervating and fitting a people for despotism; the in-
fluence of a broad river or a lofty chain of mountains,
in arresting the march of conquest or of emigration,
and thus becoming the boundary not merely of gov-
ernments, but of languages, literature, institutions and
character; the effect of a quarry of fine marble on the
progress of the liberal arts; the agency of popular in-
stitutions in promoting popular eloquence, and the
tremendous reaction of popular eloquence on the for-
tunes of a state : the comparative destiny of colonial
settlements, of insular states, of tribes fortified in na-
ture's Alpine battlements, or scattered over a smiling
region of olive gardens and vineyards ; these are all
topics, indeed, of rational curiosity and liberal specu-
lation, but important only as they may illustrate the
prospects of our own country.

It is therefore when we turn the inquiry to our coun-
try, when we survey its features, search its history.

AT CAMBRIDGE, 1824, 265

and contemplate its institutions, to see what the mo-
tives are, which are to excite and guide the minds of
the people ; when we dwell not on a distant, an uncer-
tain, an almost forgotten past ; but on an impending
future, teeming with life and action, toward which we
are rapidly and daily swept forward, and with which
we stand in the dearest connexion, which can bind the
generations of man together ; a future, which our own
characters, our own actions, cfur own principles will
do something to stamp with glory or shame; it is
then that the inquiry becomes practical, momentous,
and worthy the attention of every patriotic scholar.
We then strive, as far as it is in the power of philo-
sophical investigation to do it, to unfold our country's
reverend auspices, to cast its great horoscope in the
national sky, where many stars are waning, and many
have set ; to ascertain whether the soil which we love,
as that where our fathers are laid and we shall pre-
sently be laid with them, will be trod in times to come
by a people virtuous, enlightened and free.

The first of the circumstances which are acting and
will continue to act, with a strong peculiarity among
us, and which must prove one of the most powerful in-
fluences, in exciting and directing the intellect of the
country, is the new form of civil society, which has
here been devised and established. I shall not wan-
der so far from the literary limits of this occasion, nor
into a field so oft trodden, as the praises of free po-
litical institutions. But the direct and appropriate in-
fluence on mental effort of institutions like ours, has
not yet, perhaps, received the attention, which, from
every American scholar, it richly deserves. I have
ventured to say, that a new form of civil society has
here been devised and established. The ancient
Grecian republics, indeed, were free enough within
the walls of the single city, of which most of them
were wholly or chiefly composed ; but to these single
cities the freedom, as well as the power, was confined.
Toward the confederated or tributary states, the gov-

266 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION.

eminent was generally a despotism, more capricious
and not less stern, than that of a single tyrant. Rome
as a state was never free ; in every period of her his-
tory, authentic and dubious, royal, republican and im-
perial, her proud citizens were the slaves of an artful,
accomplished, wealthy aristocracy; and nothing but
the hard fought battles of her stern tribunes can re-
deem her memory to the friends of liberty. In ancient
and modern history tnere is no example, before our
own, of a purely elective and representative system.
It is therefore, on an entirely novel plan, that, in this
country, the whole direction and influence of affairs ;
all the trusts and honors of society ; the power of mak-
ing, abrogating and administering the laws ; the whole
civil authority and sway, from the highest post in the
government to the smallest village trust, are put di-
rectly into the market of merit. Whatsoever efficacy
there is in high station and exalted honors, to call out
and exercise the powers, either by awakening the
emulation of the aspirants or exciting the efforts of the
incumbents, is here directly exerted on the largest
mass of men, with the smallest possible deductions.
Nothing is bestowed on the chance of birth, nothing
depends on proximity to the fountain of honor, nothing
is to be acquired by espousing hereditary family inter-
ests ; but whatever is desired must be sought in the
way of a broad, fair, personal competition. It requires
little argument to show, that such a system must most
widely and most powerfully have the effect of appeal-
ing to whatever of energy the land contains ; of search-
ing out, with magnetic instinct, in the remotest quar-
ters, the latent ability of its children.

It may be objected, and it has been, that for want of
a hereditary government, we lose that powerful spring
of action which resides in the patronage of such a gov-
ernment, and must emanate from the crown. With
many individuals, friendly to our popular institutions, it
is nevertheless an opinion, that we must consent to
lose something of the genial influence of princely and

AT CAMBRIDGE, 1824. 267

royal patronage on letters and arts, and find our conso-
lation in the political benefits of our free system. It
may be doubted, however, whether this view be not
entirely false. A crown is in itself a strip of velvet set
with jewels ; the dignity which it imparts and the honor
with which it is invested, depend on the numbers, re-
sources, and the intelligence of the people who permit
it to be worn. The crown of the late emperor of Hayti.
is said to have been one of the most brilliant in the
world ; and Theodore of Corsica, while confined for
debt in the Fleet in London, sat on as high a throne
as the king of England. Since then the power and in-
fluence of the crown are really in the people, it seems
preposterous to say, that what increases the import-
ance of the people can diminish the effect of that,
which proceeds from them, depends upon them, and
reverts to them. Sovereignty, in all its truth and effi-
cacy, exists here, as much as ever it did at London, at
Paris, at Rome, or at Susa. It exists, it is true, in an
equal proportionate diffusion ; a part of it belongs to
the humblest citizen. The error seems to be in con-
founding the idea of sovereignty, with the quality of an
individual sovereign. Wheresoever Providence gath-
ers into a nation the tribes of men, there a social life,
with its energies and functions, is conferred ; and this
social life is sovereignty. By the healthful action of
our representative system, it is made to pervade the
empire like the air; to reach the farthest, descend
to the lowest, and bind the distant together; it is made
not only to co-operate with the successful and assist
the prosperous, but to cheer the remote, ; to remember
the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the
forsaken.' Before the rising of our republic in the
world, the faculties of men have had but one weary
pilgrimage to perform — to travel up to court. By an
improvement on the Jewish polity, which enjoined on
the nation a visit thrice a year to the holy city ; the
great, the munificent, the enlightened states of the an-
cient and modern world have required a constant resi-

268 -V1K- EVERETT'S ORATIOIX.

dence on the chosen spot. Provincial has become
another term for inferior and rude; and impolite,
which once meant only rural, has got to signify, in all
our languages, something little better than barbarous.
But since, in the nature of things, a small part only of
the population of a large state can, by physical possi-
bility, be crowded within the walls of a city, and there
receive the genial beams of metropolitan favor, it fol-
lows that the great mass of men are cut off' frdm the
operation of some of the strongest excitements to exer-
tion. It is rightfully urged then, as a great advantage
of our system, that the excitements of society go down
as low as its burdens, and search out and bring forward
whatsoever of ability and zeal are comprehended with-
in the limits of the land. This is but the beginning
of the benefit, or rather it is not yet the benefit. It is
the effect of this diffusion of privileges that is precious.
Capacity and opportunity, the twin sisters, who can
scarce subsist but with each other, are now brought
together. The people who are to choose, and from
whose number are to be chosen, by their neighbors,
the highest offices of state, infallibly feel an impulse
to mental activity; they read, think, and compare:
they found village schools, they collect social libraries,
they prepare their children for the higher establish-
ments of education. The world, I think, has been
abused on the tendency of institutions perfectly popu-
lar. From the ill-organized states of antiquity, terrific
examples of license and popular misrule are quoted, to
prove that man requires to be protected from himself,
without asking who is to protect him from the protec-
tor, himself also a man. While from the very first set-
tlement of America to the present day, the most promi-
nent trait of our character has been to cherish and
diffuse the means of education. The village school-
house, and the village church, are the monuments,
which the American people have erected to their free-
dom ; to read, and write, and think, are the licentious
practices, which have characterized our democracy.

AT CAMBRIDGE, 1824. 265

But it will be urged, perhaps, that, though the effect
of our institutions be to excite the intellect of the na-
tion, they excite it too much in a political direction ;
that the division and subdivision of the country into
states and districts, and the equal diffusion throughout
them of political privileges and powers, whatever fa-
vorable effect in other ways they may produce, are at-
tended by this evil,— that they kindle a political ambi-
tion, where it would not and ought not be felt ; and
particularly that they are unfriendly in their operation
on literature, as they call the aspiring youth, from the
patient and laborious vigils of the student, to plunge
prematurely into the conflicts of the forum. It may,
however, be doubted, whether there be any foundation
whatever for a charge like this ; and whether the fact,
so far as it is one, that the talent and ambition of the
country incline, at present, to a political course, be
not owing to causes wholly unconnected, with the free
character of our institutions. It need not be said that
the administration of the government of a country,
whether it be liberal or despotic, is the first thing to be
provided for. Some persons must be employed in
making and administering the laws, before any other
interest can receive attention. Our fathers, the pil-
grims, before they left the vessel, in which for five
months they had been tossed on the ocean, before set-
ting foot on the new world of their desire, drew up a
simple constitution of government As this is the first
care in the order of nature, it ever retains its para-
mount importance. Society must be preserved in its
constituted forms, or there is no safety for life, no se-
curity for property, no permanence for any institution
civil, moral or religious. The first efforts then of so-
cial men are of necessity political. Apart from every
call of ambition, honorable or selfish, of interest en-
larged or mercenary, the care of the government is
the first care of a civilized community. In the early
stages of social progress, where there is little property
and a scanty population, the whole strength of the so-
VOL. v 35

*270 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

ciety must be employed in its support and defence.
Though we are constantly receding from these stages
we have not wholly left them. Even our rapidly in-
creasing population is and will for some time remain
small, compared with the space over which it is diffus-
ed ; and this, with the total absence of large hereditary
fortunes, will create a demand for political services, on
the one hand, and a necessity of rendering them on
the other. There is then no ground for ascribing the
political tendency of the talent and activity of this
country, to an imagined incompatibility of popular
institutions with the profound cultivation of letters.
Suppose our government were changed to-morrow ;
that the five points of a stronger government were in-
troduced, a hereditary sovereign, an order of nobility,
an established church, a standing army, and a vigilant
police ; and that these should take place of that ad-
mirable system, which now, like the genial air, per-
vades all, supports all, cheers all, and is nowhere seen.
Suppose this change made, and other circumstances
to remain the same ; our population no more dense,
our boundaries as wide, and the accumulation of pri-
vate wealth no more abundant. Would there, in the
new state of things, be less interest in politics ? By
the terms of the supposition, the leading class of the
community, the nobles, are to be politicians by birth.
By the nature of the case, a large portion of the re-
mainder, who gain their livelihood by their industry and
talents, would be engrossed, not indeed in the free po-
litical competition, which now prevails, but in pursuing
the interests of rival court factions. One class only,
the peasantry, would remain, which would take less in-
terest in politics than the corresponding class in a free
state ; or rather, this is a new class, which invariably
comes in with a strong government ; and no one can
seriously think the cause of science and literature
would be promoted, by substituting an European pea-
santry, in the place of, perhaps, the most substantial
uncorrupted population on earth, the American yeo-

AT CAMBRIDGE, 1824. 271

manry. Moreover, the evil in question is with us a
self-correcting evil. If the career of politics be more
open, and the temptation to crowd it stronger, compe-
tition will spring up, numbers will engage in the pur-
suit ; the less able, the less'industrious, the less ambi-
tious must retire, and leave the race to the swift and
the battle to the strong. -But in hereditary govern-
ments no such remedy exists. One class of society,
by the nature of its position, must be rulers, magis-
trates or politicians. Weak or strong, willing or un-
willing, they must play the game, though they, as well
as the people, pay the bitter forfeit. The obnoxious
king can seldom shake off the empoisoned purple ; he
must wear the crown of thorns, till it is struck off at
the scaffold; and the same artificial necessity has
obliged generations of nobles, in all the old states of
Europe, to toil and bleed for a

Power too great to keep or to resign.

Where the compulsion stops short of these afflicting
extremities, still, under the governments in question,
a large portion of the community is unavoidably des-
tined to the calling of the courtier, the soldier, the
party retainer ; to a life of service, intrigue and court
attendance ; and thousands, and those the prominent
individuals in society, are brought up to look on a
livelihood gained by private industry as base; on
study as the pedant's trade, on labor as the badge of
slavery. I look in vain in institutions like these, for
any thing essentially favorable to intellectual progress.
On the contrary, while they must draw away the talent
and ambition of the country, quite as much as popular
institutions can do it, into pursuits foreign from the
culture of the intellect, they necessarily doom to ob-
scurity no small part of the mental energy of the land.
For that mental energy has been equally diffused by
sterner levellers than ever marched in the van of a
Revolution ; the nature of man and the Providence of

jHF
:

272 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

God. Native character, strength and quickness of
mind, are not of the number of distinctions and ac-
complishments, that human institutions can monopo-
lize within a city's walls. In quiet times, they remain
and perish in the obscurity, to which a false organiza-
tion of society consigns them. In dangerous, con-
vulsed and trying times, they spring up in the fields, in
the village hamlets, and on the mountain tops, and
teach the surprised favorites of human law, that bright
eyes, skilful hands, quick perceptions, firm purpose,
and brave hearts, are not the exclusive appanage of
courts. Our popular institutions are favorable to in-
tellectual improvement because their foundation is in
dear nature. They do not consign the greater part of
the social frame to torpidity and mortification. They
send out a vital nerve to every member of the commu-
nity, by which its talents and power, great or small,
are brought into living conjunction and strong sympa-
thy with the kindred intellect of the nation ; and every
impression on every part vibrates with electric rapidi-
ty through the whole. They encourage nature to
perfect her work; they make education, the soul's
nutriment, cheap ; they bring up remote and shrinking
talent into the cheerful field of competition ; in a
thousand ways they provide an audience for lips,
which nature has touched with persuasion ; they put
a lyre into the hands of genius ; they bestow on all
who deserve it or seek it, the only patronage worth
having, the only patronage that ever struck out a
spark of ; celestial fire,' — the patronage of fair oppor-
tunity. This is a day of improved education ; new
systems of teaching are devised ; modes of instruction,
choice of studies, adaptation of text books, the whole
machinery of means, have been brought in our day
under severe revision. But were I to attempt to point
out the most efficacious and comprehensive improve-
ment in education, the engine, by which the greatest
portion of mind could be brought and kept under cul-
tivation, the discipline which would reach farthest,

AT CAMBRIDGE, 1824. 273

sink deepest, and cause the word of instruction, not
to spread over the surface like an artificial hue, care-
fully laid on, but to penetrate to the heart and soul of
its objects, it would be popular institutions. Give the
people an object in promoting education, and the
best methods will infallibly be suggested by that in-
stinctive ingenuity of our nature, which provides means
for great and precious ends. Give the people an ob-
ject in promoting education, and the worn hand of
labor will be opened to the last farthing, that its chil-
dren may enjoy means denied to itself. This great
contest about black boards and sand tables will then
lose something of its importance, and even the exalted
names of Bell and Lancaster may sink from that very
lofty height, where an over hasty admiration has
placed them.

But though it be conceded to us, that the tendency*
which is alleged to exist in this country toward the
political career, is not a vicious effect of our free in-
stitutions, still it may be inquired, whether the new
form of social organization among us is at least to
produce no corresponding modification of our litera-
ture ? As the country advances, as the population be-
comes denser, as wealth accumulates, as the various
occasions of a large, prosperous and polite communi-
ty call into strong action and vigorous competition the
literary talent of the country, will no peculiar form or
direction be given to its literature, by the nature of
its institutions? To this question an answer must,
without hesitation, be given in the affirmative. Li-
terature as well in its origin, as in its true and only
genuine character, is but a more perfect communica-
tion of man with man and mind with mind. It is
a grave, sustained, deliberate utterance of fact, of
opinion, and feeling ; or a free and happy reflection of
nature, of characters, or of manners ; and if it be not
these it is poor imitation. It may, therefore, be as-
sumed as certain, that the peculiarity of our condition
and institutions will be reflected in some peculiarity of

274 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

our literature ; but what that shall be it is as yet too
early to say. Literary history informs us of many
studies, which have been neglected as dangerous to
existing governments ; and many others which have
been cultivated because they were prudent and safe.
We have hardly the means of settling from analogy,
what direction the mind will most decisively take,
when left under strong excitements to action, wholly
without restraint from the arm of power. It is im-
possible to anticipate what garments our native muses
will weave for themselves. To foretell our literature
would be to create it. There was a time before an
epic poem, a tragedy, or a historical composition had
ever been produced by the wit of man. It was a time
of vast and powerful empires, of populous and wealthy
cities. But these new and beautiful forms of human
thought and feeling all sprang up in Greece, under the
stimulus of her free institutions. Before they appear-
ed in the world, it would have been idle for the philo-
sopher to form conjectures, as to the direction, which
the kindling genius of the age was to assume. He,
who could form, could and would realize the anticipa-
tion, and it would cease to be an anticipation. As-
suredly epic poetry was invented then and not before,
when the gorgeous vision of the Iliad, not in its full
detail of circumstance, but in the dim conception of
its leading scenes arid sterner features, burst into the
soul of Homer. Impossible, indeed, were the task
fully to foretell the progress of the mind, under the in-
fluence of institutions as new, as peculiar, and far
more animating, than those of Greece. But if, as no
one will deny, our political system bring more minds
into action on equal terms, if it provide a prompter
circulation of thought throughout the community, if
it give weight and emphasis to more voices, if it swell
to'tens of thousands and millions those < sons of
emulation, who crowd the narrow strait where honor
travels,' then it seems not too much to expect some
peculiarity at least, if we may not call it improvement*

AT CAMBRIDGE, 1824. 275

in that literature, which is but the voice and utterance
of all this mental action. There is little doubt that
the instrument of communication itself will receive
great improvements ; that the written and spoken
language will acquire -force and power ; possibly,
that forms of address, wholly new, will be struck out,
to meet the universal demand for new energy. When
the improvement or the invention, (whatever it be,)
comes, it will come unlocked for, as well to its
happy author as the world. But where great inter-
ests are at stake, great concerns rapidly succeeding
each other, depending on almost innumerable wills,
and yet requiring to be apprehended in a glance, and
explained in a word; where movements are to be
given to a vast empire, not by transmitting orders, but
by diffusing opinions, exciting feelings, and touching
the electric chord of sympathy, there language and
expression will become intense, and the old pro-
cesses of communication must put on a vigor and a
directness, adapted to the aspect of the times. Our
country is called, as it is, practical ; but this is the
element for intellectual action. No strongly marked
and high toned literature; poetry, eloquence, or
ethics; ever appeared but in the pressure, the din,
and crowd of great interests, great enterprises, peril-
ous risks, and dazzling rewards. Statesmen, and
warriors, and poets, and orators, and artists, start up
under one and the same excitement. They are all
branches of one stock. They form, and cheer, and
stimulate, and, what is worth all the rest, understand
each other ; and it is as truly the sentiment of the
student, in the recesses of his cell, as of the soldier in
the ranks, which breathes in the exclamation :

To all the sons of sense proclaim,
One glorious hour of crowded life
Is worth an age without a name.

But we are brought back to the unfavorable aspect
of the subject, by being reminded out of history of the

276 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

splendid patronage, which arbitrary governments have
bestowed on letters, and which, from the nature of the
case, can hardly be extended even to the highest merit,
under institutions like our own. We are told of the
munificent pensions, the rich -establishments, the large
foundations ; of the museums erected, the libraries
gathered, the endowments granted, by Ptolemies, Au-
gustuses, and Louises of ancient and modern days.
We are asked to remark the fruit of this noble patron-
age ; wonders of antiquarian or scientific lore, The-
sauruses and Corpuses, efforts of erudition from which
the emulous student, who would read all things, weigh
all things, surpass all things, recoils in horror; volumes
and shelves of volumes, before which meek-eyed pa-
tience folds her hands in despair.

When we have contemplated these things, and turn
our thoughts back to our poor republican land, to our
frugal treasury, and the caution with which it is dispens-
ed ; to our modest fortunes, and the thrift with which
they are hoarded ; to our scanty public libraries, and
the plain brick walls within which they are deposited:
we may be apt to form gloomy auguries of the influ-
ence of free political institutions on our literature. It
is important then, that we examine more carefully the
experience of former ages, and see how far their insti-
tutions, as they have been more or less popular, have
been more or less associated with displays of intel-
lectual excellence. When we make this examination,
we shall be gratified to find, that the precedents are all
in favor of liberty. The greatest efforts of human
genius have been made, where the nearest approach
to free institutions has taken place. There shone not
forth one ray of intellectual light, to cheer the long and
gloomy ages of the Memphian and Babylonian despots.
Not a historian, not an orator, not a poet is heard of
in their annals. When you ask, what was achieved
by the generations of thinking beings, the millions of
men, whose natural genius was as bright as that of the
Greeks, nay, who forestalled the Greeks in the first in-

AT CAMBRIDGE, 1824. 277

vention of many of the arts, you are told that they
built the pyramids of Memphis, the temples of Thebes,
and the tower of Babylon, and carried Sesostris and
Ninus upon their shoulders, from the west of Africa to
the Indus. Mark the contrast in Greece. With the
first emerging of that country into the light of political
liberty, the poems of Homer appear. Some centuries
of political misrule and literary darkness follow, and
then the great constellation of their geniuses seems
to rise at once. The stormy eloquence and the deep
philosophy, the impassioned drama and the grave
history, were all produced for the entertainment of that
; fierce democratic' of Athens. Here then the genial
influence of liberty on letters is strongly put to the test.
Athens was certainly a free state ; free to licentious-
ness, free to madness. The rich were arbitrarily pil-
laged to defray the expenses of the state, the great
were banished to appease the envy of their rivals, the
wise sacrificed to the fury of the populace. It was a
state, in short, where liberty existed with most of the
imperfections, which have led men to love and praise
despotism. Still, however, it was for this lawless,
merciless people, that the most chastised and accom-
plished literature, which the world has known, was
produced. The philosophy of Plato was the attraction,
which drew to a morning's walk in the olive gardens
of the academy, the young men of this factious city.
Those tumultuous assemblies of Athens, the very-same,
which rose in their wrath, and to a man, and clamored
for the blood of Phocion, required to be addressed,
not in the cheap extemporaneous rant of modern de-
magogues, but in the elaborate and thrice repeated
orations of Demosthenes. No ! the noble and elegant
arts of Greece grew up in no Augustan age, enjoyed
neither royal nor imperial patronage. Unknown before
in the world, strangers on the Nile, and strangers on
the Euphrates, they sprang at once into life in a region
not unlike our own New England — iron bound, sterile
and free. The imperial astronomers of Chaldsea went
VOL. v. 36

278 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

up almost to the stars in their observatories ; but it
was a Greek, who first foretold an eclipse, and mea-
sured the year. The nations of the East invented the
alphabet, but not a line has reached us of profane litera-
ture, in any of their languages ; and it is owing to the
embalming power of Grecian genius, that the inven-
tion itself has been transmitted to the world. The
Egyptian architects could erect structures, which after
three thousand five hundred years are still standing, in
their uncouth original majesty ; but it was only on the
barren soil of Attica, that the beautiful columns of the
Parthenon and the Theseum could rest, which are
standing also. With the decline of liberty in Greece, be-
gan the decline of all her letters and all her arts ; though
her tumultuous democracies were succeeded by libe-
ral and accomplished princes. Compare the literature
of the Alexandrian with that of the Periclean age ; how
cold, pedantic and imitative! Compare, I will not
say, the axes, the eggs, the altars, and the other frigid
devices of the pensioned wits in the museum at Alex-
andria, but compare their best spirits with those of
independent Greece ; Callimachus with Pindar, Lyco-
phron with Sophocles, Aristophanes of Byzantium
with Aristotle, and Apollonius the Rhodian with Ho-
mer. When we descend to Rome, to the Augustan
age, the exalted era of Maecenas, we find one uniform
work of imitation, often of translation. The choicest
geniuses seldom rise beyond a happy transfusion of the
Grecian masters. Horace translates Alcceus, Terence
translates Menander, Lucretius translates Epicurus,
Virgil translates Homer and Cicero — I had almost
said, translates Demosthenes and Plato. But the soul
of liberty did burst forth from the lips of Cicero, c her
form had not yet lost all its original brightness,' her in-
spiration produced in him the only specimens of a
purely original literature, which Rome has transmitted
to us. After him, their literary history is written in one
line of Tacitus ; gliscente adulatione, magna ingenia de-
terrebantur. The fine arts revived a little under the

AT. CAMBRIDGE, 1824. 279

princes of the Flavian house, but never rose higher
than a successful imitation of the waning excellence
of Greece. With the princes of this line, the arts of
Rome expired, and Constantino the great was obliged
to tear down an arch of Trajan for sculptures, where-
withal to adorn his own. In modern times civilized
states have multiplied ; political institutions have vari-
ed in different states, and at different times in the same
state; some liberal institutions have existed in the
bosom of societies otherwise despotic; and a great
addition of new studies has been made to the encyclo-
paedia, which have all been cultivated by great minds,
and some of which, as the physical and experimental
sciences, have little or no direct connexion with the
state of liberty. These circumstances perplex, in some
degree, the inquiry into the effect of free institutions
on intellectual improvement in modern times. There
are times and places, where it would seem, that the
muses, both the gay and the severe, had been trans-
formed into court ladies. Upon the whole, however,
the modern history of literature bears but a cold testi-
mony to the genial influence of the governments, under
which it has grown up. Dante and Petrarch compos-
ed their beautiful works in exile; Boccaccio com-
plains in the most celebrated of his, that he was trans-
fixed with the darts of envy and calumny ; Machiavelli
was pursued by the party of the Medici for resisting
their tyrannical designs ; Guicciardini retired in dis-
gust to compose his history in voluntary exile ; Galileo
confessed in the prisons of the Inquisition, that the
earth did not move ; Ariosto lived in poverty ; and
Tasso died in want and despair.* Cervantes, after he
had immortalized himself in his great work, was oblig-
ed to write on for bread. The whole French academy
was pensioned to crush the great Corneiile. Racine,
'

* Martinelli, in his Edition of the Decamerone, cited in the in-
troduction to Sidney's Discourses on Government, Edition of 1751,
p. 34-

l!80 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

fitter living to see his finest pieces derided as cold and
worthless, died of a broken heart. The divine genius
of Shakspeare raised him to no higher rank than that
of a subaltern victor in his own, and Ben Johnson's
plays. The immortal Chancellor was sacrificed to the
preservation of a worthless minion, and is said, (false-
ly I trust,) to have begged a cup of beer in his old age,
and begged it in vain. The most valuable of the pieces
of Selden were written in that famous resort of great
minds, the tower of London. Milton, surprised by
want in his infirm old age, sold the first production of
the human mind for five pounds. The great boast of
English philosophy was expelled from his place in
Oxford, and kept in banishment, 4 the king having been
given to understand,' to use the words of Lord Sunder-
land, who ordered the expulsion, ' that one Locke has,
upon several occasions, behaved himself very factious-
ly against the government.' Dryden sacrificed his
genius to the spur of immediate want. Otway was
choked with a morsel of bread, too ravenously swal-
lowed after a long fast. Johnson was taken to prison
ibr a debt of five shillings ; and Burke petitioned for a
Professorship at Glasgow and was denied When we
survey these facts and the innumerable others, of
which these are not even an adequate specimen, we
may perhaps conclude that, in whatever way the arbi-
trary governments of Europe have encouraged letters,
it has not been in that of a steady cheering patronage.
We may think there is abundant reason to acknow-
ledge, that the ancient lesson is confirmed by modern
experience, and that popular institutions are most pro-
pitious to the full and prosperous growth of intellectual
excellence.

If the perfectly organized system of liberty, which
here prevails, be thus favorable to intellectual pro-
gress, various other conditions of our national exist-
ence are not less so, particularly the extension of one
language, government and character, over so vast a
space as the United States of America. Hitherto, in

AT CAMBRIDGE, 1824. 281

the main, the world has seen but two forms of social
existence, free governments in small states, and arbi-
trary governments in large ones. Though various
shades of both have appeared, at different times, in
the world, yet on the whole, the political ingenuity of
man has never found out the mode of extending liberal
institutions beyond small districts, or of governing
large empires, by any other means, than the visible
demonstration and exercise of absolute power. The
effect in either case has been unpropitious to the
growth of intellectual excellence. Free institutions,
though favorable to the growth of intellectual excel-
lence, are not the only thing needed. The wandering
savage is free, but most of the powers of his mind lie
dormant, under the severe privations of a barbarous
life. An infant colony, on a distant coast, may be
free, but for want of the necessary mental aliment and
excitement, may be unable to rise above the limits of
material existence. In order then that free institutions
may have their full and entire effect, in producing the
highest attainable degree of intellectual improvement,
they require to be established in an extensive region,
and over a numerous people. This constitutes a state
of society entirely new among men; a vast empire
whose institutions are wholly popular. While we ex-
perience the genial influence of those principles,
which belong to all free states, and in proportion as
they are free; independence of thought, and the right
of expressing it ; we are to feel in this country, we
and those who succeed us, all that excitement, which,
in various ways, arises from the reciprocal action upon
each other of the parts of a great empire. Literature,
as has been partly hinted, is the voice of the age and
the state. The character, energy and resources of
the country, are reflected and imaged forth in the
conceptions of its great minds. They are the organs
of the time; they speak not their own language, they
scarce think their own thoughts ; but under an impulse
like the prophetic enthusiasm of old, they must feel and

282 MR- EVERETT'S ORATION,

utter the sentiments, which society inspires. They do
not create, they obey the Spirit of the Age ; the serene
and beautiful spirit descended from the highest heaven
of liberty, who laughs at our little preconceptions, and,
with the breath of his mouth, sweeps before him the
men and the nations, that cross his path. By an un-
conscious instinct, the mind in the strong action of its
powers, adapts itself to the number and complexion of
the other minds, with which it is to enter into com-
munion or conflict. As. the voice falls into the key,
which is suited to the space to be filled, the mind, in
the various exercises of its creative faculties, strives
with curious search for that master-note, which will
awaken a vibration from the surrounding community,
and which, if it do not find, it is itself too often struck
dumb.

For this reason, from the moment in the destiny of
nations, that they descend from their culminating
point and begin to decline, from that moment the voice
of creative genius is hushed, and at best, the age of
criticism, learning and imitation, succeeds. When
Greece ceased to be independent, the forum and the
stage became mute. The patronage of Macedonian,
Alexandrian and Pergamean princes was lavished in
vain. They could not woo the healthy muses of Hel-
las, from the cold mountain tops of Greece, to dwell in
their gilded halls. Nay, though the fall of greatness,
the decay of beauty, the waste of strength, and the
wreck of power, have ever been among the favorite
themes of the pensive muse, yet not a poet arose in
Greece to chant her own elegy ; and it is after near
three centuries, and from Cicero and Sulpicius, that we
catch the first notes of pious and pathetic lamentation
over the fallen land of the arts. The freedom and gen-
ius of a country are invariably gathered into a common
tomb, and there

Can only strangers breathe
The name of that which was beneath.

AT CAMBRIDGE, 1824. 283

It is when we reflect on this power of an auspicious fu-
ture, that we realize the prospect, which smiles upon
the intellect of America. It may justly be accounted
the great peculiarity of ancient days, compared with
modern, that in antiquity there was, upon the whole,
but one civilized and literary nation at a time in the
world. Art and refinement followed in the train of po-
litical ascendency, from the east to Greece and from
Greece to Rome. In the modern world, under the in-
fluence of various causes, intellectual, political and
moral, civilization has been diffused throughout the
greater part of Europe and America. Now mark a
singular fatality as regards the connexion of this en-
larged and diffused civilization,, with the progress of
letters and the excitement to intellectual exertion in
any given state. Instead of one sole country, as in
antiquity, where the arts and refinements find a home,
there are, in modern Europe, seven or eight equally en-
titled to the -general name of cultivated nations, and
in each of which some minds of the first order have ap-
peared. And yet, by the unfortunate multiplication of
languages, an obstacle all but insuperable has been
thrown in the way of the free progress of genius, in its
triumphant course, from region to region. The muses
of Shakspeare and Milton, of Camoens, of Lope de
Vega, and Calderon, of Corneille and Racine, of Dan-
te and Tasso, of Goethe and Schiller, are strangers to
each other.

This evil was so keenly felt in the sixteenth and se-
venteenth centuries, that the Latin language was wide-
ly adopted as a dialect common to scholars. We see
men like Luther, Calvin and Erasmus, Bacon, Grotius
and Thuanus, who could scarce have written a line
without exciting the admiration of their contempora-
ries, driver! to the use of a tongue, which none but the
learned could understand. For the sake of addressing
the scholars of other countries, these great men, and
others like them, in many of their writings, were oblig-
ed to cut themselves off', from all sympathy with the

284 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

mass of those, whom as patriots they must have wish-
ed most to instruct. In works of pure science and
learned criticism, this is of less consequence; for be-
ing independent of sentiment, it matters Jess how re-
mote from real life the symbols, in which their ideas
are conveyed. But when we see a writer like Milton,
who, more than any other, whom England ever pro-
duced, was a master of the music of his native tongue,
who, besides all the eloquence of thought and imagery,
knew better than any other man how to clothe them,
according to his own beautiful expression,

In notes, with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness, long drawn out,
With wanton heed and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running.
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony ;

when we see a master of English eloquence thus gitt*
ed choosing a dead language, the dialect of the closet,
a tongue without an echo from the hearts of the peo-
ple, as the vehicle of his defence of that people's rights ;
asserting the cause of Englishmen in the language, as
it may be truly called, of Cicero; we can only measure
the incongruity, by reflecting what Cicero would him-
self have thought and felt, if called to defend the cause
of Roman freedom, not in the language of the Roman
citizen, but in that of the Chaldeans or Assyrians, or
some people still farther remote in the histpry of the
world. There is little doubt that the prevalence of the
Latin language among modern scholars, was a great
cause not only of the slow progress of letters among
the lower ranks, but of the stiffness and constraint for-
merly visible in the vernacular style of most scholars
themselves. That the reformation in religion advanc-
ed with such rapidity, is doubtless, in no small degree,
to be attributed to the translation of the scriptures,
and the use of liturgies in the modern tongues. While
the preservation in England of a strange language— I

AT CAMBRIDGE, 1824.

will not sin against the majesty of Rome by calling it;
Latin — in legal acts, down to so late a period as 1730,
may be one cause, that the practical forms of adminis-
tering justice have not been made to keep pace with
the popular views, that have triumphed in other things.
With the erection of popular institutions under Crom-
well, among various other legal improvements,* very
many of which were speedily adopted by our plain
dealing forefathers, the records of the law were order-
ed to be kept in English ; ' A novelty,' says the learn-
ed commentator on the English laws, 4 which at the
restoration was no longer continued, practisers having
found it very difficult to express themselves so con-
cisely or significantly in any other language but La-
tin ;'f an argument for the use of that language,
whose soundness it must be left to clients to estimate.
Nor are the other remedies more efficacious, which
have been attempted for the evil of a multiplicity of
tongues. Something is done by translations and
something by the acquisition of foreign languages.
But that no effectual transfusion of the higher litera-
ture of a country can take place, in the way of trans-
lation, is matter of notoriety; and it is a remark of
one of the few, who could have courage to make such
a remark, Madame de Stael, that it is impossible fully
to comprehend the literature of a foreign tongue*
The general preference given to Young's Night
Thoughts and Ossian, over all the other English
poets, in many parts of the continent of Europe,
seems to confirm the justice of the observation.
There is, indeed, an influence of exalted genius co-
extensive with the earth. Something of its power
will be felt, in spite of the obstacles of different lan-
guages, remote regions, and other times. But its
true empire, its lawful sway, are at home and over the
hearts of kindred men. A charm, which nothing can

* See a number of them in Lord Somers' Tracts, vol. i,
t Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. iii. 422.
VOL. v. 37

286 Alii- EVERETT'S ORATION.

borrow, nothing counterfeit, nothing dispense with,
resides in the simple sound of our mother tongue.
Not analyzed, nor reasoned upon, it unites the ear-
liest associations of life with the maturest conceptions
of the understanding. The heart is willing to open
all its avenues to the language, in which its infantile
caprices were soothed; and by the curious efficacy
of the principal association, it is this echo from the
feeble dawn of life, which gives to eloquence much
of its manly power, and to poetry much of its divine
charm. This feeling of the music of our native lan-
guage is the first intellectual capacity that is develop-
ed in children, and when by age or misfortune.

• * •'",.'"'.

' The ear is all unstrung,
Still, stiM, it loves the lowland tongue.'

What a noble prospect is opened in this connexion
for the circulation of thought and sentiment in our
country! Instead of that multiplicity of dialect, by
which mental communication and sympathy are cut
off in the old world, a continually expanding realm is
opened and opening to American intellect, in the com-
munity of our language, throughout the wide spread
settlements of this continent. The enginery of the
press will here, for the first time, be brought to bear,
with all its mighty power, on the minds and hearts of
men, in exchanging intelligence, and circulating opin-
ions, unchecked by the diversity of language, over an
empire more extensive than the whole of Europe.

And this community of language, all important as it
is, is but a part of the manifold brotherhood, which
unites and will unite the growing millions of America.
In Europe, the work of international alienation, which
begins in diversity of language, is carried on and con-
summated by diversity of government, institutions,
national descent, and national prejudices. In cross-
ing the principal rivers, channels and mountains, in
that quarter of the world, you are met, not only by new

AT CAMBRIDGE, 1824. 287

tongues, but by new forms of government, new asso-
ciations of ancestry, new and generally hostile objects
of national boast and gratulation. While on the other
hand, throughout the vast regions included within the
limits of our republic, not only the same language,
but the same laws, the same national government, the
same republican institutions, and a common ancestral
association prevail, and will diffuse themselves. Man-
kind will here exist, move, and act in a kindred mass,
such as was never before congregated on the earth's
surface. The necessary consequences of such a
cause overpower the imagination. What would be
the effect on the intellectual state of Europe, at the
present day, were all her nations and tribes amalga-
mated into one vast empire, speaking the same tongue,
united into one political system, and that a free one,
and opening one broad unobstructed pathway for the
interchange of thought and feeling, from Lisbon to
Archangel! If effects are to bear a constant propor-
tion to their causes ; if the energy of thought is to be
commensurate with the masses which prompt it, and
the masses it must penetrate ; if eloquence is to grow
in fervor with the weight of the interests it is to plead,
and the grandeur of the assemblies it addresses;
if efforts rise with the glory that is to crown them; in
a word, if the faculties of the human mind, as we firmly
believe, are capable of tension and achievement alto^
gether indefinite ;

Nil actum reputans, dum quid superesset agendum,

then it is not too much to say, that a new era will open
on the intellectual world, in the fulfilment of our coun-
try's prospects. By the sovereign efficacy of the par-
tition of powers between the national and state gov-
ernments, in virtue of which the national government
is relieved from all the odium of internal administra-
tion, and the state governments are spared the con-
flicts of foreign politics, all bounds seem removed from.

288 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION.

the possible extension of our country, but the geo-
graphical limits of the continent. Instead of growing
cumbrous, as it increases in size, there never was a
moment since the first settlement of Virginia, when
the political system of America moved with so firm
and bold a step as at the present day. If there is any
faith in our country's auspices, this great continent,
in no remote futurity, will be filled up with a homoge-
neous population ; with the mightiest kindred peo-
ple known in history ; our language will acquire an
extension, which no other ever possessed; and the
empire of the mind, with nothing to resist its sway,
will attain an expansion, of which as yet we can but
partly conceive. The vision is too magnificent to be
iiilly borne; a mass of two or three hundred millions,
not chained to the oar like the same number in China,
by a brutalizing despotism, but held in their several
orbits of nation and state, by the grand representative
attraction ; bringing to bear on every point the concen-
trated energy of such a host ; calling into competition
so many minds ; uniting into one great national feel-
ing the hearts of so many freemen ; all to be guided,
persuaded, moved and swayed, by the master spirits
of the time!

Let me not be told, that this is a chimerical imagi-
nation of a future indefinitely removed ; let me not
hear repeated the ribaldry of an anticipation of 4 two
thousand years' — of a vision that requires for its ful-
filment a length of ages beyond the grasp of any
reasonable computation. It is the last point of pecu-
liarity in our condition, to which I invite your atten-
tion, as affecting the progress of intellect in the coun-
try, that it is growing with a rapidity hitherto entirely
without example in the world. For the two hundred
years of our existence, the population has doubled it-
self, in periods of less than a quarter of a century. In
the infancy of the country, and while our numbers re-
mained within the limits of a youthful colony, a pro-
gress so rapid as this, however important in the prin-

AT CAMBRIDGE, 1824. 289

ciple of growth disclosed, was not yet a circumstance
strongly to fix the attention. But arrived at a popula-
tion often millions, it is a fact of the most overpower-
ing interest, that, within less than twenty-five years,
these ten millions will have swelled to twenty ; that
the younger members of this audience will be citizens
of the largest civilized state on earth ; that in a few
years more than one century, the American population
will equal the fabulous numbers of the Chinese empire.
This rate of increase has already produced the most
striking phenomena. A few weeks after the opening
of the Revolutionary drama at Lexington, the momen-
tous intelligence, that the first blood was spilt, reach-
ed a party of hunters beyond the Alleghanies, who had
wandered far into the western wilderness. In pro-
phetic commemoration of the glorious event, they
gave the name of Lexington to the spot of their en-
campment in the woods. That spot is now the capi-
tal of a state larger than Massachusetts ; it is the seat
of a university as fully attended as our venerable
Alma Mater; nay, more, it is the capital of a state
from which, in the language of one of her own citizens,
whose eloquence is the ornament of his country, the
tide of emigration still farther westward is more fully
pouring than from any other in the union.*

I need not say, that this astonishing increase of
numbers, is by no means the limit and measure of our
country's growth. Arts, agriculture, all the great na-
tional interests, all the sources of national wealth, are
growing in a ratio still more rapid. In our cities the
intensest activity is apparent; in the country every
spring of prosperity, from the smallest improvement
in husbandry to the construction of canals across the
continent, is in vigorous action ; abroad our vessels
are beating the pathways of the ocean white ; on the
inland frontier, the nation is journeying on, like a
healthy giant, with a pace more like romance than
reality.

* Mr. Clay's late speech on Internal Improvement,

290 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

These facts, and thousands like them, form one of
those peculiarities in our country's condition, which
will have the most powerful influence on the minds of its
children. The population of several states of Europe
has reached its term. In some it is declining, in some
stationary, and in the most prosperous, under the ex-
traordinary stimulus of the last part of the eighteenth
century, it doubles itself but about once in seventy-five
years. In consequence of this, the process of social
transmission is heavy and slow. Men, not adventi-
tiously favored, come late into life, and the best years
of existence are exhausted in languishing competition.
The man grows up, and in the stern language of one
of their most renowned economists,* finds no cover laid
for him at Nature's table. The smallest official pro-
vision is a boon, at which great minds are not ashamed
to grasp; the assurance of the most frugal subsistence
commands the brightest talents and the most laborious
studies ; poor wages pay for the unremitted labor of
the most curious hands ; and it is the smallest part of
the population only that is within the reach even of
these humiliating springs of action. We need not la-
bor to contrast this state of things with the teeming
growth and noble expansion of all our institutions and
resources. Instead of being shut up, as it were, in the
prison of a stationary, or a very slowly progressive com-
munity, the emulation of our countrymen is drawn out
and tempted on, by a horizon constantly receding
before them. New nations of kindred freemen are
springing up in successive periods, shorter even than
the active portion of the life of man. 'While we
spend our time,' says Burke on this topic, ; in deliberat-
ing on the mode of governing two millions in Ameri-
ca, we shall find we have millions more to manage.'!
Many individuals are in this house, who were arrived
at years of discretion when these words of Burke were
uttered, and the two millions, which Great Britain was

* Mr. Malthus.

t Speech on Conciliation with America. March. 22, 1775.

AT CAMBRIDGE, 1824. 291

then to manage, have grown into ten, exceedingly un-
manageable. The most affecting view of this subject
is, that it puts it in the power of the wise, and good, and
great to gather, while they live, the ripest fruits of their
labors. Where, in human history is to be found a con-
trast like that, which the last fifty years have crowded
into the lives of those favored men, who raising their
hands or their voices, when our little bands were led
out to the perilous conflict with one of the most power-
ful empires on earth, have lived to be crowned with
the highest honors of the Republic, which they esta-
blished ? Honor to their gray hairs, and peace and
serenity to the evening of their eventful days !

Though it may never again be the fortune of our
country to bring within the compass of half a century
a contrast so dazzling as this, yet in its grand and steady
progress, the career of duty and usefulness will be run
by all its children, under a constantly increasing stimu-
lus. The voice, which, in the morning of life, shall
awaken the patriotic sympathy of the land, will be
echoed back by a community, incalculably swelled in all
its proportions, before it shall be hushed in death. The
writer, by whom the noble features of our scenery
shall be sketched with a glowing pencil, the traits of
our romantic early history gathered up with filial zeal,
and the peculiarities of our character seized with deli-
cate perception, cannot mount so entirely and rapidly
to success, but that ten years will add new millions to
the numbers of his readers. The American statesman,
the orator, whose voice is already heard in its suprema-
cy, from Florida to Maine, whose intellectual empire
already extends beyond the limits of Alexander's, has
yet new states and new nations starting into being, the
willing tributaries to his sway.

This march of our population westward has been
attended with consequences in some degree novel,
in the history of the human mind. It is a fact, some-
what difficult of explanation, that the refinement of the
ancient nations seemed almost wholly devoid of an

292 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

elastic and expansive principle. The arts of Greece-
were enchained to her islands and her coasts; they
did not penetrate the interior. The language and lite-
rature of Athens were as unknown, to the north of Pin-
dus, at a distance of two hundred miles from the capi-
tal of Grecian refinement, as they were in Scythia.
Thrace, whose mountain tops may almost be seen
from the porch of the temple of Minerva at Sunium,
was the proverbial abode of barbarism. Though the
colonies of Greece were scattered on the coasts of
Italy, of France, of Spain, and of Africa, no extension
of their population toward the interior took place, and
the arts did not penetrate beyond the walls of the cities,
where they were cultivated. How different is the pic-
ture of the diffusion of the arts and improvement of
civilization, from the coast to the interior of America !
Population advances westward with a rapidity, which
numbers may describe indeed, but cannot represent,
with any vivacity, to the mind. The wilderness, which
one year is impassable, is traversed the next by the cara-
vans of the industrious emigrants, who go to follow the
setting sun, with the language, the institutions, and the
arts of civilized life. It is not the irruption of wild bar-
barians, come to visit the wrath of God on a degene-
rate empire ; it is not the inroad of disciplined banditti,
marshalled by the intrigues of ministers and kings. It
is the human family led out to possess its broad patri-
mony. The states and nations, which are springing up
in the valley of the Missouri, are bound to us, by the
dearest ties of a common language, a common gov-
ernment, and a common descent. Before New Eng-
land can look witli coldness on their rising myriads,
she must forget that.some of the best of her own blood
is beating in their veins; that her hardy children,
with their axes on their shoulders, have been literally
among the pioneers in this march of humanity ; that
young as she is, she has become the mother of popu-
lous states. What generous mind would sacrifice to
a selfish preservation of local preponderance, the de-

AT CAMBRIDGE, 1824. 293

light of beholding civilized nations rising up in the xle-
sert ; and the language, the manners, the institutions,
to which he has been reared, carried with his house-
hold gods to the foot otjthe Rocky Mountains ? Who
can forget that this extension of our territorial limits is
the extension of the empire of all we hold dear ; of our
laws, of our character, of the memory of our ances-
tors, of the great achievements in our history ?
Whithersoever the sons of the thirteen states shall
wander, to southern or western climes, they will send
back their hearts to the rocky shores, the battle fields,
and the intrepid counsels of the Atlantic coast. These
are placed beyond the reach of vicissitude. They have
become already, matter of history, of poetry, of elo-
quence :

The love, where death has set his seal,
Nor age can chili, nor rival steal.
Nor falsehood disavow.

Divisions may spring up, ill blood arise, parties be
formed, and interests may seem to clash; but the
great bonds of the nation are linked to what is passed.
The deeds of the great men, to whom this country owes
its origin and growth, -are a patrimony, I know, of which
its children will never deprive themselves. As long as
the Mississippi and the Missouri shall flow, those men
and those deeds will be remembered on their banks.
The sceptre of government may go where it will ; but
that of patriotic feeling can never depart from Judah. In
all that mighty region, which is drained by the Missouri
and its tributary streams — the valley coextensive with
the temperate zone — will there be, as long as the
name of America shall last, a father, that will not
take his children on his knee and recount to them
the events of the twentieth of December, the nine-
teenth of April, the seventeenth of June, and the fourth
of July?

This then is the theatre, on which the intellect of

VOL. v. 38

294 MK- EVERETT'S ORATION,

America is to appear, and such the motives to its ex-
ertion ; such the mass to be influenced by its energies,
such the crowd to witness its efforts, such the glory to
crown its success. If I err, in this happy vision of my
country's fortunes, I thank God for an error so animat-
ing. If this be false, may I never know the truth.
Never may you, my friends, be under any other feeling,
than that a great, a growing, an immeasurably expand-
ing country is calling upon you for your best services.
The name and character of your Alma Mater have al-
ready been carried by some of our brethren thousands
of miles from her venerable walls ; and thousands of
miles still farther westward, the communities of kindred
men are fast gathering, whose minds and hearts will
act in sympathy with yours.

The most powerful motives call on us as scholars
for those efforts, which our common country demands
of all her children. Most of us are of that class, who
owe whatever of knowledge has shone into our minds,
to the free and popular institutions of our native land.
There are few of us, who may not be permitted to
boast, that we have been reared in an honest poverty
or a frugal competence, and owe every thing to those
means of education, which are equally open to all.
We are summoned to new energy and zeal by the high
nature of the experiment we are appointed in Provi-
dence to make, and the grandeur of the theatre on
which it is to be performed. When the old world af-
forded no longer any hope, it pleased heaven to open
this last refuge of humanity. The attempt has begun,
and is going on, far from foreign corruption, on
the broadest scale, and under the most benignant aus-
pices ; and it certainly rests with us to solve the great
problem in human society, to settle, and that forever,
the momentous question — whether mankind can be
trusted with a purely popular system ? One might al-
most think, without extravagance, that the departed
wise and good of all places and times, are looking
down from their happy seats to witness what shall now

AT CAMBRIDGE, 1824. 295

be done by us ; that they who lavished their treasures
and their blood of old, who labored and suffered, who
spake and wrote, who fought and perished, in the one

§reat cause of freedom and truth, are now hanging
•om their orbs on high, over the last solemn experi-
ment of humanity. As I have wandered over the
spots, once the scene of their labors, and mused
among the prostrate columns of their Senate Houses
and Forums, I have seemed almost to hear a voice
from the tombs of departed ages ; from the sepulchres
of the nations, which died before the sight. They ex-
hort us, they adjure us to be faithful to our trust. They
implore us, by the long trials of struggling humanity,
by the blessed memory of the departed ; by the dear
faith, which has been plighted by pure hands, to the
holy cause of truth and man ; by the awful secrets of
the prison houses, where the sons of freedom have
been immured ; by the noble heads which have been
brought to the block ; by the wrecks of time, by the
eloquent ruins of nations, they conjure us not to quench
the light which is rising on the world. Greece cries
to us, by the convulsed lips of her poisoned, dying De-
mosthenes ; and Rome pleads with us in the mute per-
.suasion of her mangled Tully. They address us each
and all in the glorious language of Milton, to one,
who might have canonized his memory in the hearts
of the friends of liberty, but who did most shamefully
betray the cause, ' Reverere tantam de te expectatio-
nem, spem patriae de te unicam. Reverere vultus et
vulnera tot fortiurn virorum, quotquot pro libertate tarn
strenue decertarunt, manes etiam eorum qui in ipso
certamine occubuerunt. Reverere exterarum quoque
civitaturn existimationem de te atque sermones ; quan-
tas res de libertate nostra tarn fortiter parta, de nostra
republica tarn gloriose exorta sibi polliceantur; qua?
si tarn cito quasi aborta evanuerit, profecto nihil aeque
dedecorosum huic genti atque periculosum fuerit.'*

* Milton's Defensio Secunda.

296 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

Yes, my friends, such is the exhortation which calls
on us to exert our powers, to employ our time, and con-
secrate our labors in the cause of our native land.
When we engage in that solemn study, the history of
our race, when we survey the progress of man, from
his cradle in the east to these last limits of his wan-
dering: when we behold him forever flying westward
from civil and religious thraldom, bearing his house-
hold gods over mountains and seas, seeking rest and
finding none, but still pursuing the flying bow of pro-
mise, to the glittering hills which it spans in Hesperian
climes, we cannot but exclaim with Bishop Berkeley,
the generous prelate of England, who bestowed his
benefactions, as well as blessings, on our country.

Westward the star of Empire takes its way ;

The four first acts already past,
The fifth shall close the drama with the day ;

Time's noblest offspring is the last.

In that high romance, if romance it be, in which the
great minds of antiquity sketched the fortunes of the
ages to come, they pictured to themselves a favored
region beyond the ocean, a land of equal laws and
happy men. The primitive poets beheld it in the isl-
ands of the blest ; the Doric bards surveyed it in the
Hyperborean regions ; the sage of the academy placed
it in the lost Atlantis ; and even the sterner spirit of
Seneca could discern a fairer abode of humanity, in
distant regions then unknown. We look back upon
these uninspired predictions, and almost recoil from
the obligation they imply. By us must these fair vi-
sions be realized, by us must be fulfilled these high
promises, which burst in trying hours from the longing
hearts of the champions of truth. There are no more
continents or worlds to be revealed ; Atlantis hath
arisen from the ocean, the farthest Thule is reached,
there are no more retreats beyond the sea, no more
discoveries, no more hopes. Here then a mighty
work is to be fulfilled, or never, by the race of mortals.

AT CAMBRIDGE, 1824. 297

The man, who looks with tenderness on the sufferings
of good men in other times ; the descendant of the
pilgrims, who cherishes the memory of his fathers :
the patriot, who feels an honest glow at the majesty of
the system of which he is a member; the scholar, who
beholds with rapture the long sealed book of unpreju-
diced truth expanded to all to read ; these are they,
by whom these auspices are to be accomplished. Yes.
brethren, it is by the intellect of the country, that the
mighty mass is to be inspired ; that its parts are to
communicate and sympathize, its bright progress to be
adorned with becoming refinements, its strong sense
uttered, its character reflected, its feelings interpreted
to its own children, to other regions, and to after ages.
Meantime the years are rapidly passing away and
gathering importance in their course. With the pre-
sent year will be completed the half century from that
most important era in human history, the commence-
ment of our revolutionary war. The jubilee of our
national existence is at hand. The space of time, that
has elapsed from that momentous date, has laid down
in the dust, which the blood of many of them had al-
ready hallowed, most of the great men to whom, un-
der Providence, we owe our national existence and
privileges. A few still survive among us, to reap the
rich fruits of their labors and sufferings ; and One* has
yielded himself to the united voice of a people, and
returned in his age, to receive the gratitude of the na-
tion, to whom he devoted his youth. It is recorded on
the pages of American history, that when this friend
of our country applied to our commissioners at Paris,
in 1776, for a passage in the first ship they should des-
patch to America, they were obliged to answer him,
(so low and abject was then our dear native land,) that
they possessed not the means nor the credit sufficient
for providing a single vessel, in all the ports of France.

* Major General La Fayette, who was present at the delivery of
this oration. — COMPILER.

MR. EVERETT'S ORATION, &c.

Then, exclaimed the youthful hero, 4 I will provide my
own ;' and it is a literal fact, that when all America
was too poor to offer him so much as a passage to our
shores, he left, in his tender youth, the bosom of home,
of happiness, of wealth, of rank, to plunge in the dust
and blood of our inauspicious struggle.

Welcome, friend of our fathers, to our shores •
Happy are our eyes that behold those venerable fea-
tures. Enjoy a triumph, such as never conqueror or
monarch enjoyed, the assurance, that throughout
America, there is not a bosom, which does not beat
with joy and gratitude at the sound of your name.
You have already met and saluted, or will soon meet,
the few that remain of the ardent patriots, prudent
counsellors, and brave warriors, with whom you were
associated in achieving our liberty. But you have
looked round in vain for the faces of many, who would
have lived years of pleasure on a day like this, with
their old companion in arms and brother in peril.
Lincoln, and Greene, and Knox, and Hamilton, are
gone; the heroes of Saratoga and Yorktown have
fallen, before the only foe they could not meet.
Above all, the first of heroes and of men, the friend of
your youth, the more than friend of his country, rests
in the bosom of the soil he redeemed. On the banks
of his Potomac, he lies in glory and peace. You will
revisit the hospitable shades of Mount Vernon, but him
whom you venerated as we did, you will not meet at
its door. His voice of consolation, which reached
you in the Austrian dungeons, cannot now break its
silence, to bid you welcome to his own roof. But the
grateful children of America will bid you welcome, in
his name. Welcome, thrice welcome to our shores ;
and whithersoever throughout the limits of the conti-
nent your course shall take you, the ear that hears you
shall bless you, the eye that sees you shall bear witness
to you, and every tongue exclaim, with heartfelt joy.
welcome, welcome La Fayette !

AN ADDRESS

DELIVERED AT THE LAYING OP THE CORNER STONE
THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT.

BY DANIEL WEBSTER.

THIS uncounted multitude before me, and around
me, proves the feeling which the occasion has excited.
These thousands of human faces, glowing with sym-
pathy and joy, and, from the impulses of a common
gratitude, turned reverently to heaven, in this spacious
temple of the firmament, proclaim that the day, the
place, and the purpose of our assembling have made
€, deep impression on our hearts.

If, indeed, there be any thing in local association fit
to affect the mind of man, we need not strive to re-
press the emotions which agitate us here. We are
among the sepulchres of our fathers. We are on
ground, distinguished by their valor, their constancy,
and the shedding of their blood. We are here, not to
fix an uncertain date in our annals, nor to draw into
notice an obscure and unknown spot. If our humble
purpose had never been conceived, if we ourselves
had never been born, the 17th of June 1775 would
have been a day on which all subsequent history would
have poured its light, and the eminence where we
stand, a point of attraction to the eyes of successive
generations. But we are Americans. We live in
what may be called the early age of this great conti-
nent ; and we know that our posterity, through all time,
are here to suffer and enjoy the allotments of humani-
ty. We see before us a probable train of great events;
we know that our own fortunes have been happily
cast ; and it is natural, therefore, that we should be
moved by the contemplation of occurrences which

300 MR. WEBSTER'S ADDRESS,

have guided our destiny before many of us were born,
and settled the condition in which we should pass
that portion of our existence, which God allows to
men on earth.

We do not read even of the discovery of this con-
tinent, without feeling something of a personal interest
in the event ; without being reminded how much it
has affected our own fortunes, and our own existence.
It is more impossible for us, therefore, than for others,
to contemplate with unaffected minds that interesting,
I may say, that most touching and pathetic scene,
when the great Discoverer of America stood on the
deck of his shattered bark, the shades of night
falling on the sea, yet no man sleeping ; tossed on the
billows of an unknown ocean, yet the stronger billows
of alternate hope and despair tossing his own troubled
thoughts ; extending forward his harassed frame,
straining westward his anxious and eager eyes, till
Heaven at last granted him a moment of rapture and
ecstasy, in blessing his vision with the sight of the un-
known world.

Nearer to our times, more closely connected with
our fates, and therefore still more interesting to our
feelings and affections, is the settlement of our own
country by colonists from England. We cherish every
memorial of these worthy ancestors ; we celebrate
their patience and fortitude; we admire their daring
enterprise; we teach our children to venerate then-
piety; and we are justly proud of being descended
from men, who have set the world an example of
founding civil institutions on the great and united
principles of human freedom and human knowledge.
To us, their children, the story of their labors and suf-
ferings can never be without its interest. We shall
not stand unmoved on the shore of Plymouth, while
the sea continues to wash it ; nor will our brethren in
another early and ancient colony, forget the place of
its first establishment, till their river shall cease to flow
by it. No vigor of youth, no maturity of manhood.

AT BUNKER HILL* 1825. 301

will lead the nation to forget the spots where its in-
fancy was cradled and defended.

But the great event, in the history of the continent
which we are now met here to commemorate ; that
prodigy of modern times, at once the wonder and the
blessing of the world, is the American Revolution. In
a day of extraordinary prosperity and happiness, of
high national honor, distinction, and power, we are
brought together, in this place, by our love of country,
by our admiration of exalted character, by our grati-
tude for signal services and patriotic devotion.

The society, whose organ I am, was formed for the
purpose of rearing some honorable and durable monu-
ment to the memory of the early friends of American
Independence. They have thought, that for this sub-
ject no time could be more propitious^ than the pre-
sent prosperous and peaceful period ; that no place
could claim preference over this memorable spot; and
that no day could be more auspicious to the undertak*
ing, than the anniversary of the battle which was here
fought. The foundation of that monument we have
now laid. With solemnities suited to the occasion,
with prayers to Almighty God for his blessing, and in
the midst of this cloud of witnesses, we have begun the
work. We trust it will be prosecuted ; and that
springing from a broad foundation, rising high in mas-
sive solidity and unadorned grandeur, it may remain,
as long as Heaven permits the work of man to last, a
fit emblem, both of the events in memory of which it
is raised, and of the gratitude of those who have rear-
ed it.

We know, indeed, that the record of illustrious ae-
tions is most safely deposited in the universal remem-
brance of mankind. We know, that if we could cause
this structure to ascend, not only till it reached tho
skies, but till it pierced them, its broad surfaces could
still contain but part of that, which, in an age .of know-
ledge, hath already been spread over the earth, and
which history charges itself with making known to all

VOL. v« 39

MR. WEBSTER'S ADDRESS.

future times. We know, that no inscription on en-
tablatures less broad than the earth itself, can carry
information of the events we commemorate, where it
has not already gone ; and that no structure, which
shall not outlive the duration of letters and knowledge
among men^ can prolong the memorial. But our ob-
ject is, by this edifice to show our own deep sense of
the value and importance of the achievements of our
ancestors; and, by presenting this work of gratitude
to the eye, to keep alive similar sentiments, and to
foster a constant regard for the principles of the Revo-
lution. Human beings are composed not of reason
only, but of imagination also, and sentiment ; and that
is neither wasted nor misapplied which is appropriat-
ed to the purpose of giving right direction to senti-
ments, and opening proper springs of feeling in the
heart. Let it not be supposed that our object is to
perpetuate national hostility, or even to cherish a mere
military spirit. It is higher, purer, nobler. We con-
secrate our work to the spirit of national independ-
ence, and we wish that the light of peace may rest
upon it forever. We rear a memorial of our convic-
tion of that unmeasured benefit, which -has been con-
ferred on our own land, and of the happy influences,
which have been produced, by the same events, on the
general interests of mankind. We come, as Ameri-
cans, to mark a spot, which must forever be dear to us
and our posterity. We wish, that whosoever, in all
coming time, shall turn his eye hither, may behold
that the place is not undistinguished, where the first
great battle of the Revolution was fought. We wish,
that this structure may proclaim the magnitude and
importance of that event, to every class and every age.
We wish, that infancy may learn the purpose of its
erection from maternal lips, and that weary and wither-
ed age may behold it, and be solaced by the recollec-
tions which it suggests. We wish, that labor may
look up here, and be proud, in the midst of its toil.
We wish, that, in those days of disaster, which, as

AT BUNKER HILL, 1825. 303

they come on all nations, must be expected to come
on us also, desponding patriotism may turn its eyes
hitherward, and be assured that the foundations of our
national power still stand strong. We wish, that this
column, rising towards heaven among the pointed
spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may con-
tribute also to produce, in all minds, a pious feeling of
dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the
last object on the sight of him who leaves his native
shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may
be something which shall remind him of the liberty
and the glory of his country. Let it rise, till it meet
the sun in his coming; let the earliest light of the
morning gild it, and parting day linger and play on its
summit.

We live in a most extraordinary age. Events so
various and so important, that they might crowd and
distinguish centuries, are, in our times, compressed
within the compass of a single life. When has it
happened that history has had so much to record, in
the same term of years, as since the 17th of June,
1775? Our own Revolution, which, under other cir-
cumstances, might itself have been expected to occa-
sion a war of half a century, has been achieved:
twenty-four sovereign and independent states erected ;
and a general government established over them, so
safe, so wise, so free, so practical, that we might well
wonder its establishment should have been accom-
plished so soon, were it not far the greater wonder
that it should have been established at all. Two
or three millions of people have been augmented to
twelve ; and the great forests of the West prostrated
beneath the arm of successful industry ; and the dwel-
lers on the banks of the Ohio and the Mississippi, be-
come the fellow-citizens and neighbors of those who
cultivate the hills of New-England. We have a com-
merce, that leaves no sea unexplored ; navies, which
take no law from superior force ; revenues, adequate
to all the exigencies of government, almost without

304 MR. WEBSTER'S ADDRESS.

taxation ; and peace with all nations, founded on equal
rights and mutual respect.

Europe, within the same period, has been agitated
by a mighty revolution, which, while it has been felt
in the individual condition and happiness of almost
every man, has shaken to the centre her political
fabric, and dashed against one another thrones, which
had stood tranquil for ages. On this, our continent,
our own example has been followed; and colonies
have sprung up to be nations. Unaccustomed sounds
of liberty and free government have reached us from
beyond the track of the sun ; and at this moment the
dominion of European power, in this continent, from
the place where we stand to the south pole, is annihi-
lated forever.

In the mean time, both in Europe and America, such
has been the general progress of knowledge; such
the improvements in legislation, in commerce, in the
arts, in letters, and above all, in liberal ideas, and the
general spirit of the age, that the whole world seems
changed.

Yet, notwithstanding that this is but a faint abstract
of the things which have happened since the day of
the battle of Bunker Hill, we are but fifty years re-
moved from it ; and we now stand here, to enjoy all
the blessings of our own condition, and to look abroad
on the brightened prospects of the world, while we
hold still among us some of those, who were active
agents in the scenes of 1775, and who are now here,
from every quarter of New England, to visit, once more,
and under circumstances so affecting, I had almost said
so overwhelming, this renowned theatre of their cour-
age and patriotism.

Venerable men ! you have come down to us, from a
former generation. Heaven has bounteously length-
ened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous
day. You are now, where you stood, fifty years ago,
this very hour, with your brothers, and your neighbors,
shoulder to shoulder, in the strife for your country.

AT BUNKER HILL, 1825. 305

Behold, how altered! The same heavens are indeed
over your heads ; the same ocean rolls at your feet ;
but all else, how changed ! You hear now no roar of
hostile cannon, you see no mixed volumes of smoke
and flame rising from burning Charlestown. The
ground strewed with the dead and the dying ; the im-
petuous charge; the steady and successful repulse;
the loud call to repeated assault ; the summoning of
all that is manly to repeated resistance ; a thousand
bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to
whatever of terror there may be in war and death ; —
all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no
more. All is peace. The heights of yonder metropo-
lis, its towers and roofs, which you then saw filled with
wives and children and countrymen in distress and
terror, and looking with unutterable emotions for the
issue of the combat, have presented you to-day with
the sight of its whole happy population, come out to
welcome and greet you with a universal jubilee.
Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position appro-
priately lying at the foot of this mount, and seeming
fondly to cling around it, are not means of annoyance
to you, but your country's own means of distinction
and defence. All is peace; and God has granted you
this sight of your country's happiness, ere you slumber
in the grave forever. He has allowed you to behold
and to partake the reward of your patriotic toils ; and
he has allowed us, your sons and countrymen, to meet
you here, and in the name of the present generation,
in the name of your country, in the name of liberty, to
thank you !

But, alas! you are not all here! Time and the
sword have thinned your ranks. Prescott, Putnam,
Stark, Brooks, Read, Pomeroy, Bridge ! our eyes seek
for you in vain amidst this broken band. You are
gathered to your fathers, and live only to your country
in her grateful remembrance, and your own bright ex-
ample. But let us not too much grieve, that you have
met the common fate of men. You lived, at least,

306 MR. WEBSTER'S ADDRESS,

ng enough to know that your work had been nobly
id successfully accomplished. You lived to see your

lonj

am

country's independence established, and to sheathe

your swords from war. On the light of Liberty you

saw arise the light of Peace, like

4 another morn,
Risen on mid-noon ;'— <

and the sky, on which you closed your eyes, was
cloudless.

But — ah ! — Him ! the first great Martyr in this great
cause ! Him ! the premature victim of his own self-
devoting heart ! Him ! the head of our civil councils,
and the destined leader of our military bands ; whom
nothing brought hither, but the unquenchable fire of
his own spirit ; Him ! cut off by Providence, in the
hour of overwhelming anxiety and thick gloom; fall-
ing, ere he saw the star of his country rise; pouring
out his generous blood, like water, before he knew
whether it would fertilize aland of freedom or of bond-
age! how shall I struggle with the emotions, that
stifle the utterance of thy name ! — Our poor work may
perish ; but thine shall endure ! This monument may
moulder away ; the solid ground it rests upon may sink
down to a level with the sea ; but thy memory shall
not fail ! Wheresoever among men a heart shall be
found, that beats to the transports of patriotism and
liberty, its aspirations shall be to claim kindred with
thy spirit !

But the scene amidst which we stand does not per-
mit us to confine our thoughts or our sympathies to
those fearless spirits, who hazarded or lost their lives
on this consecrated spot. We have the happiness to
rejoice here in the presence of a most worthy repre-
sentation of the survivors of the whole Revolutionary
Army.

Veterans ! you are the remnant of many a well
fought field. You bring with you marks of honor

AT BUNKER HILL, 1825. 307

from Trenton and Monmouth, from Yorktown, Cam-
den, Bennington and Saratoga. Veterans of half a
century ! when in your youthful days, you put every
thing at hazard in your country's cause, good as that
cause was, and sanguine as youth is, still your fondest
hopes did not stretch onward to an hour like this !
At a period to which you could not reasonably have
expected to arrive ; at a moment of national prosperi-
ty, such as you could never have foreseen, you are
now met, here, to enjoy the fellowship of old soldiers,
and to receive the overflowings of a universal grati-
tude.

But your agitated countenances and your heaving
breasts inform me, that even this is not an unmixed
joy. I perceive that a tumult of contending feelings
rushes upon you. The images of the dead, as well as
the persons of the living, throng to your embraces.
The scene overwhelms you, and I turn from it. May
the Father of all mercies smile upon your declining
years, and bless them ! And when you shall here have
exchanged your embraces ; when you shall once more
have pressed the hands which have been so often ex-
tended to give succor in adversity, or grasped in the
exultation of victory ; then look abroad into this lovely
land, which your young valor defended, and mark the
happiness with which it is filled ; yea, look abroad into
the whole earth, and see what a name you have con-
tributed to give to your country, and what a praise you
have added to freedom, and then rejoice in the sympa-
thy and gratitude, which beam upon your last days
from the improved condition of mankind. \ ;.

The occasion does not require of me any particular
account of the battle of the 17th of June, nor any
detailed narrative of the events which immediately pre-
ceded it. These are familiarly known to all. In the
progress of the great and interesting controversy,
Massachusetts and the town of Boston had become
early and marked objects of the displeasure of the
British Parliament. This had been manifested, in the

308 MK. WEBSTER'S

Act for altering the Government of the Province, and
in that for shutting up the Port of Boston. Nothing
sheds more honor on our early history, and nothing
better shows how little the feelings and sentiments of
the colonies were known or regarded in England, than
the impression which these measures every where pro-
duced in America. It had been anticipated, that while
the other colonies would be terrified by the severity of
the punishment inflicted on Massachusetts, the other
seaports would be governed by a mere spirit of gain ;
and that, as Boston was now cut off from all commerce,
the unexpected advantage, which this blow on her was
calculated to confer on other towns, would be greedily
enjoyed. How miserably such reasoners deceived
themselves ! How little they knew of the depth, and
the strength, and the intenseness of that feeling of re-
sistance to illegal acts of power, which possessed the
whole American people ! Every where the unworthy
boon was rejected with scorn. The fortunate occa-
sion was seized, every where, to show to the whole
world, that the colonies were swayed by no local inter-
est, no partial interest, no selfish interest. The temp-
tation to profit by the punishment of Boston was
strongest to our neighbors of Salem. Yet Salem was
precisely the place, where this miserable proffer was
spurned, in a tone of the most lofty self-respect, and
the most indignant patriotism. 4 We are deeply affect-
ed,' said its inhabitants, 4 with the sense of our public
calamities ; but the miseries that are now rapidly
hastening on our brethren in the capital of the Province,
greatly excite our commiseration. By shutting up
the port of Boston, some imagine that the course of
trade might be turned hither and to our benefit ; but
we must be dead to every idea of justice, lost to all
feelings of humanity, could we indulge a thought to
seize on wealth, and raise our fortunes on the ruin of
our suffering neighbors.' These noble sentiments
were not confined to our immediate vicinity. In that
day of general affection and brotherhood, the blow

AT BUNKER HILL, 1325.

given to Boston smote on every patriotic heart, from
one end of the country to the other. Virginia and the
Carolinas, as well as Connecticut and New Hampshire,
felt and proclaimed the cause to be their own. The
Continental Congress, then holding its first session in
Philadelphia, expressed its sympathy for the suffering
inhabitants of Boston, and addresses were received
from all quarters, assuring them that the cause was a
common one, and should be met by common efforts
and common sacrifices. The Congress of Massachu-
setts responded to these assurances ; and in an address
to the Congress at Philadelphia, bearing the official
signature, perhaps among the last, of the immortal
Warren, notwithstanding the severity of its suffering
and the magnitude of the dangers which threatened it,
it was declared, that this colony ' is ready, at all
times, to spend and to be spent in the cause of
America.9

But the hour drew nigh, which was to put profes-
sions to the proof, and to determine whether the
authors of these mutual pledges were ready to seal
them in blood. The tidings of Lexington and Con-
cord had no sooner spread, than it was universally felt,
that the time was at last come for action. A spirit
pervaded all ranks, not transient, not boisterous, but
deep, solemn, determined,

4 totamqne infusa per artufc
Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.'

War, on their own soil and at their own doors, was in-
deed, a strange work to the yeomanry of New-Eng-
land ; but their consciences were convinced of its ne-
cessity, their. country called them to it, and they did
not withhold themselves from the perilous trial. The
ordinary occupations of life were abandoned ; the
plough was staid in the unfinished furrow ; wives gave
up their husbands, and mothers gave up their sons, to
the battles of a civil war. Death might come, in hon-
VOL. v. 40

310 Mil. WEBSTER'S ADDRESS,

or, on the field ; it might come, in disgrace, on the
scaffold. For either and for both they were prepared.
The sentiment of Quincy was full in their hearts.
4 Blandishments,' said that distinguished son of genius
and patriotism, ; will not fascinate us nor will threats of
a halter intimidate ; for, under God. we are determin-
ed, that wheresoever, whensoever, or howsoever we
shall be called to make our exit, we will die free men.'

The 17th of June saw the four New England colonies
standing here, side by side, to triumph or to fall togeth-
er; and there was with them from that moment to the
end of the war, what I hope will remain with them for-
ever, one cause, one country, one heart.

The battle of Bunker Hill was attended with the
most important effects beyond its immediate result as
a military engagement. It created at once a state of
open, public war. There could now be no longer a
question of proceeding against individuals, as guilty of
treason or rebellion. That fearful crisis was past.
The appeal now lay to the sword, and the only ques-
tion was, whether the spirit and the resources of the
people would hold out, till the object should be accom-
plished. Nor were its general consequences confined
to our own country. The previous proceedings of the
colonies, their appeals, resolutions, and addresses, had
made their cause known to Europe. Without boast-
ing, we may say, that in no age or country, has the pub-
lic cause been maintained with more force of argu-
ment, more power of illustration, or more of that per-
suasion which excited feeling and elevated principle
can alone bestow, than the revolutionary state papers
exhibit. These papers will forever deserve to be studi-
ed, not only for the spirit which they breathe, but for
the ability with which they were written.

To this able vindication of their cause, the colonies
had now added a practical and severe proof of their
own true devotion to it, and evidence also of the pow-
er which they could bring to its support. All now saw,
that if America fell, she would not fall without a strug-
gle. Men felt sympathy and regard, as well as surprise,.

AT BUNKER HILL, 1825, 311

when they beheld these infant states, remote, unknown,
unaided, encounter the power of England, and in the
iirst considerable battle, leave more of their enemies
dead on the field, in proportion to the number of com-
batants, than they had recently known in the wars of
Europe.

Information of these events, circulating through Eu-
rope, at length reached the ears of one who now hears
me. He has not forgotten the emotion, which the
fame of Bunker Hill, and the name of Warren, excited
in his youthful breast.

Sir, we are assembled to commemorate the estab-
lishment of great public principles of liberty, and to do
honor to the distinguished dead. The occasion is too
severe for eulogy to the living. But, sir, your interest-
ing relation to this country, the peculiar circum-
stances which surround you and surround us, call on me
to express the happiness which we derive from your
presence and aid in this solemn commemoration.

Fortunate, fortunate man ! with what measure of de-
votion will you not thank God, for the circumstances
of your extraordinary life ! You are connected with
both hemispheres and with two generations. Heaven
saw fit to ordain, that the electric spark of Liberty
should be conducted, through you, from the new world
to the old: and we, who are now here to perform this
duty of patriotism, have all of us long ago received it in
charge from our fathers to cherish your name and your
virtues. You will account it an instance of your good
fortune, sir, that you crossed the seas to visit us at a
time which enables you to be present at this solemnity.
You now behold the field, the renown of which
reached you in the heart of France, and caused a thrill
in your ardent bosom. You see the lines of the little
redoubt thrown up by the incredible diligence of Pres-
cott ; defended, to the last extremity, by his lion-heart-
ed valor ; and within which the corner stone of our
monument has now taken its position. You see where
Warren fell, and where Parker, Gardner, McCleary,
Moore, and other early patriots fell with him. Those

• * "
312 MR. WEBSTER'S ADDRESS,

who survived that day, and whose lives have been pro-
longed to the present hour, are now around you. Some
of them you have known in the trying scenes of the war.
Behold ! they now stretch forth their feeble arms to
embrace you. Behold! they raise their trembling
voices to invoke the blessing of God on you, and yours,
forever.

Sir, you have assisted us in laying the foundation of
this edifice. You have heard us rehearse, with our
feeble commendation, the names of departed patriots.
Sir, monuments and eulogy belong to the dead. We
give them, this day, to Warren and his associates.
On other occasions they have been given to your more
immediate companions in arms, to Washington, to
Greene, to Gates, Sullivan and Lincoln. Sir, we have
become reluctant to grant these, our highest and last
honors, further. We would gladly hold them yet back
from the little remnant of that immortal band. Serus
in ccelum rcdeas. Illustrious as are your merits, yet far,
oh, very far, distant be the day, when any inscription
shall bear your name, or any tongue pronounce its
eulogy !

The leading reflection, to which this occasion seems
to invite us, respects the great changes which have
happened m the fifty years, since the battle of Bunker
Hill was fought. And it peculiarly marks the charac-
ter of the present age, that, in looking at these changes,
and in estimating their effect on our condition, we are
obliged to consider, not what has been done in our
own country only, but in others also. In these interest-
ing times, while nations are making separate and in-
dividual advances in improvement, they make, too, a
common progress; like vessels on a common tide,
propelled by the gales at different rates, according to
their several structure and management, but all mov-
ed forward by one mighty current beneath, strong
enough to bear onward whatever does not sink be-
neath it.

A chief distinction of the present day is a commu-
nity of opinions and knowledge amongst men, in dif-

AT BUNKER HILL, 1825. 313

ferent nations, existing in a degree heretofore un-
known. Knowledge has, in our time, triumphed, and
is triumphing, over distance, over difference of lan-
guages, over diversity of habits, over prejudice, and
over bigotry. The civilized and Christian world is
fast learning the great lesson, that difference of nation
does not imply necessary hostility, and that all contact
need not be war. The whole world is becoming a
common field for intellect to act in. Energy of mind,
genius, power, wheresoever it exists, may speak out in
any tongue, and the world will hear it. A great chord
of sentiment and feeling runs through two continents,
and vibrates over both. Every breeze wafts intelli-
gence from country to country ; every wave rolls it ;
all give it forth, and all in turn receive it. There is a
vast commerce of ideas; there are marts and ex-
changes for intellectual discoveries, and a wonderful
fellowship of those individual intelligences which
make up the mind and opinion of the age. Mind
is the great lever of all things ; human thought is the
process by which human ends are ultimately answer-
ed ; and the diffusion of knowledge, so astonishing in
the last half century, has rendered innumerable minds,
variously gifted by nature, competent to be competi-
tors, or fellow-workers, on the theatre of intellectual
operation.

From these causes, important improvements have
taken place in the personal condition of individuals.
Generally speaking, mankind are not only better fed.
and better clothed, but they are able also to enjoy
more leisure ; they possess more refinement and more
self-respect. A superior tone of education, manners,
and habits prevails. This remark, most true in its ap-
plication to our own country, is also partly true, when
applied elsewhere. It is proved by the vastly aug-
mented consumption of those articles of manufacture
and of commerce, which contribute to the comforts
and the decencies of life ; an augmentation which has
far outrun the progress of population. And while the

*•
314 Mil. WEBSTER'S ADDRESS,

unexampled and almost incredible use of machinery
would seem to supply the place of labor, labor still
finds its occupation and its reward ; so wisely has Pro-
vidence adjusted men's wants and desires to their con-
dition and their capacity.

Any adequate survey, however, of tbe progress
made in the last half century, in the polite and the
mechanic arts, in machinery and manufactures, in
commerce and agriculture, in letters and in science,
would require volumes. I must abstain wholly from
these subjects, and turn, for a moment, to the contem-
plation of what has been done on the great question of
politics and government. This is the master topic of
the age ; and during the whole fifty years, it has in-
tensely occupied the thoughts of men. The nature of
civil government, its ends and uses, have been can-
vassed and investigated; ancient opinions attacked
and defended ; new ideas recommended and resisted,
by whatever power the mind of man could bring to
the controversy. From the closet and the public halls
the debate has been transferred to the field ; and the
world has been shaken by wars of unexampled magni-
tude, and the greatest variety of fortune. A day of
peace has at length succeeded; and now that the
strife has subsided, and the smoke cleared away, we
may begin to see what has actually been done, per-
manently changing the state and condition of human
society. And without dwelling on particular circum-
stances, it is most apparent, that, from the beforemen-
tioned causes of augmented knowledge and improved
individual condition, a real, substantial, and important
change has taken place, and is taking place, greatly
beneficial, on the whole, to human liberty and human
happiness.

The great wheel of political revolution began to
move in America. Here its rotation was guarded,
regular, and safe. Transferred to the other continent,
from unfortunate but natural causes, it received an ir-
regular and violent impulse ; it whirled along with a
fearful celerity ; till at length, like the chariot wheels

AT BUNKER HILL, 1825. 315

in the races of antiquity, it took fire from the rapidity
of its own motion, and blazed onward, spreading con-
flagration and terror around.

We learn from the result of this experiment, how
fortunate was our own condition, and how admirably
the character of our people was calculated for making
the great example of popular governments. The pos-
session of power did not turn the heads of the Ameri-
can people, for they had long been in the habit of exer-
cising a great portion of self-control. Although the
paramount authority of the parent state existed over
them, yet a large field of legislation had always been
open to our colonial assemblies. They were accustom-
ed to representative bodies and the forms of free gov-
ernment ; they understood the doctrine of the division
of power among different branches, and the necessity
of checks on each. The character of our countrymen,
moreover, was sober, moral and religious; and there
was little in the change to shock their feelings of jus-
tice and humanity, or even to disturb an honest preju-
dice. We had no domestic throne to overturn, no
privileged orders to cast down, no violent changes of
property to encounter. In the American Revolution,
no man sought or wished for more than to defend and
enjoy his own. None hoped for plunder or for spoil.
Rapacity was unknown to it ; the axe was not among
the instruments of its accomplishment; and we all
know that it could not have lived a single day under
any well founded imputation of possessing a tendency
adverse to the Christian religion.

It need not surprise us, that, under circumstances
less auspicious, political revolutions elsewhere, even
when well intended, have terminated differently. It is,
indeed, a great achievement, it is the master work of
the world, to establish governments entirely popular,
on lasting foundations ; nor is it easy, indeed, to intro-
duce the popular principle at all, into governments to
which it has been altogether a stranger. It cannot be
doubted, however, that Europe has come out of the
contest, in which she has been so long engaged, wit

316 MR. WEBSTER'S ADDRESb,

greatly superior knowledge, and, in many respects, a
highly improved condition. Whatever benefit has
been acquired, is likely to be retained, for it consists
mainly in the acquisition of more enlightened ideas.
And although kingdoms and provinces may be wrest-
ed from the hands that hold them, in the same man-
ner they were obtained ; although ordinary and vulgar
power may, in human affairs, be lost as it has been
won ; yet it is the glorious prerogative of the empire of
knowledge, that what it gains it never loses. On the
contrary it increases by the multiple of its own power;
all its ends become means ; all its attainments, helps
to new conquests. Its whole abundant harvest is
but so much seed wheat, and nothing has ascertain-
ed, and nothing can ascertain, the amount of ultimate
product.

Under the influence of this rapidly increasing know-
ledge, the people have begun, in all forms of govern-
ment, to think, and to reason, on affairs of state. Re-
garding government as an institution for the public
good, they demand a knowledge of its operations, and
a participation in its exercise. A call for the Repre-
sentative system, wherever it is not enjoyed, and where
there is already intelligence enough to estimate its
value, is perseveringly made. Where men may speak
out, they demand it ; where the bayonet is at their
throats, they pray for it.

When Louis XIV. said, " I am the state," he express-
ed the essence of the doctrine of unlimited power.
By the rules of that system, the people are disconnect-
ed from the state; they are its subjects; it is their
lord. These ideas, founded in the love of power, and
long supported by the excess and the abuse of it, are
yielding, in our age, to other opinions ; and the civiliz-
ed world seems at last to be proceeding to the convic-
tion of that fundamental and manifest truth, that the
powers of government are but a trust, and that they
cannot be lawfully exercised but for the good of the
community. As knowledge is more and more extend-
ed, this conviction becomes more and more general.

HILL,

AT BUNKER H1LET 1825. 317

Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament.
Life and power are scattered with all its beams. The
prayer of the Grecian combatant, when enveloped in
unnatural clouds and darkness, is the appropriate po-
litical supplication for the people of every country not
yet blessed with free institutions ;

4 Dispel this cloud, the light of heaven restore,
Give me TO SEE — and Ajax asks no more.'

We may hope^ that the growing influence of enlight-
ened sentiments will promote the permanent peace of
the world. Wars, to maintain family alliances, to up-
hold or to cast down dynasties, to regulate successions
to thrones, which have occupied so much room in the
history of modern times, if not less likely to happen at
all, will be less likely to become general and involve
many nations, as the great principle shall be more and
more established, that the interest of the world is
peace, and its first great statute, that every nation pos-
sesses the power of establishing a government for it-
self. But public opinion has attained also an influ-
ence over governmei:ts, which do not admit the popu-
lar principle into their organization. A necessary re-
spect for the judgement of the world operates, in some
measure, as a control over the most unlimited forms of
authority. It is owing, perhaps, to this truth, that the
interesting struggle of the Greeks has been suffered to
go on so long, without a direct interference, either to
wrest that country from its present masters, and add it
to other powers, or to execute the system of pacifica-
tion by force, and with united strength, lay the neck
of Christian and civilized Greece at the foot of the bar-
barian Turk. Let us thank God that we live in an
age, when something has influence besides the bayo-
net, and when the sternest authority does not venture
to encounter the scorching power of public reproach.
Any attempt of the kind I have mentioned, should be
met by one universal burst of indignation ; the air of

VOL. v. 41

WEBS'

318 MR. WEBSTER'S ADDRESS,

the civilized world ought to be made too warm to be
comfortably breathed by any who would hazard it.

It is, indeed, a touching reflection, that while, in the
fulness of our country's happiness, we rear this monu-
ment to her honor, we look for instruction, in our un-
dertaking, to a country which is now in fearful contest,
not for works of art or memorials of glory, but for her
own existence. Let her be assured, that she is not
forgotten in the world ; that her efforts are applaud-
ed, and that constant prayers ascend for her success.
And let us cherish a confident hope for her final tri-
umph. If the true spark of religious and civil liberty-
be kindled, it will burn. Human agency cannot extin-
guish it. Like the earth's central fire it may be smo-
thered for a time; the ocean may overwhelm it;
mountains may press it down ; but its inherent and un-
conquerable force will heave both the ocean and the
land, and at some time or another, in some place or
another, the volcano will break out and flame up to
heaven.

Among the great events of the half century, we must
reckon, certainly, the Revolution of South America ;
and we are not likely to overrate the importance of
that Revolution, either to the people of the country it-
self or to the rest of the world. The late Spanish co-
lonies, now independent States, under circumstances
less favorable, doubtless, than attended our own Re-
volution, have yet successfully commenced their na-
tional existence. They have accomplished the great
object of establishing their independence; they are
known and acknowledged in the world ; and although
in regard to their systems of government, their senti-
ments on religious toleration, and their provisions for
public instruction, they may have yet much to learn, it
must be admitted that they have risen to the condition
of settled and established states, more rapidly than
could have been reasonably anticipated. They alrea-
dy furnish an exhilirating example of the difference be-
tween free governments and despotic misrule. Their
commerce, at this moment, creates a new activity in

AT BUNKER HILL, 1825. 319

all the great marts of the world. They show them-
selves able, by an exchange of commodities, to bear
a useful part in the intercourse of nations. A new
spirit of enterprize and industry begins to prevail ; all
the great interests of society receive a salutfary im-
pulse ; and the progress of information not only testi-
fies to an improved condition, but constitutes, itself,
the highest and most essential improvement.

When the battle of Bunker Hill was fought, the ex-
istence of South America was scarcely felt in the ci-
vilized world. The thirteen little colonies of North
America habitually called themselves the * Continent.'
Borne down by colonial subjugation, monopoly, and
bigotry, these vast regions of the South were hardly
visible above the horizon. But in our day there hath
been, as it were, a new creation. The Southern
Hemisphere emerges from the sea. Its lofty moun-
tains begin to lift themselves into the light of heaven ;
its broad and fertile plains stretch out, in beauty, to
the eye of civilized man, and at the mighty being of
the voice of political liberty the waters of darkness
retire.

And, now, let us indulge an honest exultation in
the conviction ^)f the benefit, which the example of
our country has produced, and is likely to produce, on
human freedom and human happiness. And let us
endeavor to comprehend, in all its magnitude, and to
feel, in all its importance, the part assigned to us in
the great drama of human affairs. We are placed at
the head of the system of representative and popular
governments. Thus far our example shows, that such
governments are compatible, not only with respecta-
bility and power, but with repose, with peace, with
security of personal rights, with good laws and a just
administration.

We are not propagandists. Wherever other sys-
tems are preferred, either as being thought better in
themselves, or as better suited to existing condition,
we leave the preference to be enjoyed. Our history

320 MK- WEBSTER'S ADDRESS,

hitherto proves, however, that the popular form is
practicable, and that with wisdom and knowledge men
may govern themselves; and the duty incumbent on
us is, to preserve the consistency of this cheering ex-
ample, and take care that nothing may weaken its au-
thority with the world. If, in our case, the Represen-
tative system ultimately fail, popular governments
must be pronounced impossible. No combination of
circumstances more favorable to the experiment can
ever be expected to occur. The last hopes of man-
kind, therefore, rest with us ; and if it should be pro-
claimed, that our example had become an argument
against the experiment, the knell of popular liberty
would be sounded throughout the earth.

These are excitements to duty; but they are not
suggestions of doubt. Our history and our condition,
all that is gone before us, and all that surrounds us,
authorize the belief, that popular governments, though
subject to occasional variations, perhaps not always
for the better, in form, may yet, in their general charac-
ter, be as durable and permanent as other systems.
We know, indeed, that, in our country, any other is
impossible. The Principle of Free Governments ad-
heres to the American soil. It is bedded in it ; im-
moveable as its mountains.

And let the sacred obligations which have devolv-
ed on this generation, and on us, sink deep into our
hearts. Those are daily dropping from among us,
who established our liberty and our government. The
great trust now descends to new hands. Let us ap-
ply ourselves to that which is presented to us, as our
appropriate object. We can win no laurels in a war
for independence. Earlier and worthier hands have
gathered them all. Nor are there places for us by
the side of Solon, and Alfred, and other founders of
states. Our fathers have filled them. But there re-
mains to us a great duty of defence and preservation ;
and there is opened to us, also, a noble pursuit, to
which the spirit of the times strongly invites us. Our

AT BUNKER HILL, 1825. 321

proper business is improvement. Let our age be the
age of improvement. In a day of peace, let us advance
the arts of peace and the works of peace. Let us de-
velope the resources of our land, call forth its powers,
build up its institutions, promote all its great interests,
and see whether we also, in our day and generation,
may not perform something worthy to be remembered.
Let us cultivate a true spirit of union and harmony.
In pursuing the great objects, which our condition
points out to us, let us act under a settled conviction,
and an habitual feeling, that these twenty-four states
are one country. Let our conceptions be enlarged
to the circle of our duties. Let us extend our ideas
over the whole of the vast field in which we are call-
ed to act. Let our object be, our country, our whole
country, and nothing but our country. And, by the
blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast
and splendid Monument, not of oppression and terror,
but of Wisdom, of Peace, and of Liberty, upon which
the world may gaze, with admiration, forever.

AN ORATION,

DELIVERED JULY 4, 1825,

IN COMMEMORATION OP AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, BEFORE
THE SUPREME EXECUTIVE OP THE COMMONWEALTH, AND
THE CITY COUNCIL AND INHABITANTS OF THE CITY OF
BOSTON :

BY CHARLES SPRAGUE.

WHY, on this day, lingers along these sacred walls,
the spirit-kindling anthem ? Why, on this day, waits
the herald of God at the altar, to utter forth his holy
prayer? Why, on this day, congregate here the wise,
and the good, and the beautiful of the land ? — Fathers !
Friends! it is the Sabbath Day of Freedom! The
race of the ransomed, with grateful hearts and exulting
voices, have again come up, in the sunlight of peace,
to the Jubilee of their Independence !

The story of our country's sufferings, our country's
triumphs, though often and eloquently told, is still a
story that cannot tire, and must not be forgotten.
You will listen to its recital, however unadorned ; and
I shall not fear, therefore, even from the place where
your chosen ones have so long stood, to delight and
enlighten, I shall not fear to address you. Though I
tell you no new thing, I speak of that, which can never
fall coldly on your ears. You will listen, for you are
the sons and daughters of the heroic men, who lighted
the beacon of " rebellion," and unfurled, by its blaze,
the triumphant banner of liberty ; your own blood will
speak for me. A feeble few of that intrepid band are
now among you, yet spared by the grave for your
veneration; they will speak for me. Their sinking
forms, their bleached locks, their honorable scars ; —
these will, indeed, speak for me. Undaunted men !

MR. SPRAGUE'S ORATION, &c. 323

how must their dim eyes brighten, and their old hearts
grow young with rapture, as they look round on the
happiness of their own creation. Long may they re-
main, our glad and grateful gaze, to teach us all, that
we may treasure all, of the hour of doubt and danger;
and when their God shall summon them to a glorious
rest, may they bear to their departed comrades the
confirmation of their country's renown, and their chil-
dren's felicity.

We meet to indulge in pleasing reminiscences.
One happy household, we have come round the table
of memory, to banquet on the good deeds of others,
and to grow good ourselves, by that on which we feed.
Our hope for remembrance, our desire to remember
friends and benefactors, are among the warmest arid
purest sentiments of our nature. To the former we
cling stronger, as life itself grows weaker. We know
that we shall forget, but the thought of being forgotten,
is the death-knell to the spirit. Though our bodies,
moulder, we would have our memories live. When
we are gone, we shall not hear the murmuring voice
of affection, the grateful tribute of praise; still, we
love to believe that voice will be raised, and that tri-
bute paid. Few so humble, that they sink below, none
so exalted, that they rise above, this common feeling
of humanity. The shipwrecked sailor, thrown on a
shore where human eye never lightened, before he
scoops in the burning sand his last, sad resting-place,
scratches on a fragment of his shattered bark the re-
cord of his fate, in the melancholy hope, that it may
some day be repeated to the dear ones, who have
long looked out in vain for his coming. The laurelled
warrior, whose foot has trodden on crowns, whose
hand has divided empires, when he sinks on victory's
red field, and life flies hunted from each quivering
vein, turns his last mortal thought on that life to come,
his country's brightest page.

The remembrance we so ardently desire, we render
unto others. To those who are dear, we pay our
dearest tribute. It is exhibited in the most simple,

324 MR. SPRAGUE'S ORATION,

in the most sublime forms. We behold it in the child,
digging a little grave for its dead favorite, and marking
the spot with a willow twig and a tear. We behold it
in the congregated nation, setting up on high its monu-
mental pile to the mighty. We beheld it, lately, on
that green plain, dyed with freedom's first blood ; on
that proud hill, ennobled as freedom's first fortress ;
when the tongues of the Eloquent, touched with crea-
tive fire, seemed to bid the dust beneath them live, and
the long-buried come forth. We behold it now, here,
in this consecrated temple, where we have assembled
to pay our annual debt of gratitude, to talk of the bold
deeds of cur ancestors, from the day of peril, when
they wrestled with the savage for his birthright, to the
day of glory, when they proclaimed a new charter to
man, and gave a new nation to the world.

Roll back the tide of time : how powerfully to us ap-
plies the promise : " I will give thee the heathen for an
inheritance." Not many generations ago, where you
now sit, circled with all that exalts and embellishes ci-
vilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind, and
the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here lived and
loved another race of beings. Beneath the same sun
that rolls over your heads, the Indian hunter pursued
the panting deer ; gazing on the same moon that
smiles for you, the Indian lover woed his dusky mate.
Here the wigwam blaze beamed on the tender and
helpless, the council fire glared on the wise and daring.
Now they dipped their noble limbs in your sedgy
lakes, and now they paddled the light canoe along
your rocky shores. Here they warred; the echoing
whoop, the bloody grapple, the defying death-song, all
were here ; and when the tiger strife was over, here
curled the smoke of peace. Here, too, they worship-
ped ; and from many a dark bosom went up a pure
prayer to the Great Spirit. He had not written His
laws for them on tables of stone, but He had traced
them on the tables of their hearts. The poor child of
nature knew not the God of revelation, but the God of
the universe he acknowledged in every thing around.

AT BOSTON, JULY 4, 1823. 323

He beheld him in the star that sunk in beauty behind
his lonely dwelling, iri the sacred orb that flamed on
him from his mid- day throne; in the flower that snap-
ped in the morning breeze, in the lofty pine, that defied
a thousand whirlwinds ; in the timid warbler that never
left its native grove, in the fearless eagle, whose untir-
ed pinion was wet in clouds ; in the worm that crawled
at his foot, and in his own matchless form, glowing
with a spark of that light, to whose mysterious source
he bent, in humble, though blind adoration.

And all this has passed away. Across the ocean
came a pilgrim bark, bearing the seeds of life and
death. The former were sown for you, the latter
sprang up in the path of the simple native. Two hun-
dred years have changed the character of a great con-
tinent, and blotted forever from its face a whole, pe-
culiar people. Art has usurped the bowers of nature,
and the anointed children of education have been too
powerful for the tribes of the ignorant. Here and
there a stricken few remain, but how unlike their
bold, untamed, untameable progenitors! The In-
dian, of falcon glance, and lion bearing, the theme of
the touching ballad, the hero of the pathetic tale is
gone ! and his degraded offspring crawl upon the soil
where he walked in majesty, to remind us how mise-
rable is man, when the foot of the conqueror is on his
neck.

As a race they have withered from the land. Their
arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, their
cabins are in the dust. Their council-fire has long
since gone out on the shore, and their war-cry is fast
dying to the untrodden west. Slowly and sadly they
climb the distant mountains, and read their doom in
the setting sun. They are shrinking before the migh-
ty tide which is pressing them away ; they must soon
hear the roar of the last wave, which will settle over,
them forever. Ages hence, the inquisitive white man,
as he stands by some growing city, will ponder on the
structure of their disturbed remains, and wonder to
what manner of person they belonged. They will
VOL. v, 42

326 MK. SPRAGUE'S ORATION,

live only in the songs and chronicles of their exter-
minators. Let these be faithful to their rude virtues
as men, and pay due tribute to their unhappy fate as a
people.

To the Pious, who, in this desert region built a city
of refuge, little less than to the Brave, who round that
city reared an impregnable wall of safety, we owe the
blessings of this day. To enjoy, and to perpetuate re-
ligious freedom, the sacred herald of civil liberty, they
deserted their native land, where the foul spirit of per-
secution was up in its fury, and where mercy had long
wept at the enormities perpetrated in the abused
names of Jehovah and Jesus. " Resist unto blood !"
blind zealots had found in the bible, and lamentably in-
deed, did they fulfil the command. With " Thus saith
the Lord," the engines of cruelty were set in motion,
and many a martyr spirit, like the ascending prophet
from Jordan's bank, escaped in fire to heaven.

It was in this night of time, when the incubus of
bigotry sat heavy on the human soul : —

When crown and crosier ruled a coward world,

And mental darkness o'er the nations curled, —

When, wrapt in sleep, earth's torpid children lay,

Hugged their vile chains, and dreamed their age away, —

?Twasthen,by faith impelled, by freedom fired,

By hope supported, and by God inspired, —

"Twas then the pilgrims left their father's graves,

To seek a Home beyond the waste of waves ;

And where it rose, all rough and wintry, here,

They swelled devotion's song, and dropped devotion's tear.

Can we sufficiently admire the firmness of this little
brotherhood, thus self-banished from their country?
Unkind and cruel, it was true, but still their country.
There they were born, and there, where the lamp of
life was lighted, they had hoped it would go out.
There a father's hand had led them, a mother's smile
had warmed them. There were the haunts of their
boyish days, their kinsfolk, their friends, their recollec-
tions, their all. Yet all was left; even while their
heartstrings bled at the parting, all was left ; and a

AT BOSTON, JULY 4, 1825. 327

stormy sea, a savage waste, and a fearful destiny, were
encountered — for Heaven, and for you.

It is easy enough to praise, when success has sanc-
tified the act ; and to fancy that we, too, could endure
a heavy trial, which is to be followed by a rich reward.
But before the deed is crowned, while the doers are
yet about us, bearing like ourselves the common in-
firmities of the flesh, we stand aloof, and are not al-
ways ready to discern the spirit that sustains and ex-
alts them. When centuries of experience have rolled
away, we laud the exploit on which we might have
frowned, if we had lived with those who left their age
behind to achieve it. We read of empires founded,
and people redeemed, of actions embalmed by time,
and hallowed by romance, and our hearts leap at the
lofty recital : we feel it would be a glorious thing to
snatch the laurels of immortal fame. But it is in the
day of doubt, when the result is hidden in clouds,
when danger stands in every path, and death is lurking
in every corner ; it is then, that the men who are born
for great occasions, start boldly from the world's trem-
bling multitude, and swear to " do, or die/'

Such men were they who peopled; — such men.
too, were they who preserved these shores. Of these
latter giant spirits, who battled for independence, we are
to remember, that destruction awaited defeat. They
were " rebels," obnoxious to the fate of " rebels." They
were tearing asunder the ties of loyalty, and hazard-
ing all the sweet endearments of social and domestic
life. They were unfriended, weak and wanting. Going
thus forth, against a powerful and vindictive foe, \yhat
could they dare to hope? What had they not to
dread ? They could not tell, but that vengeance would
hunt them down, and infamy hang its black scutcheon
over their graves. They did not know that the
angel of the Lord would go forth with them, and smite
the invaders of their sanctuary. They did not know
that generation after generation, would, on this day.
rise up and call them blessed : that tlje sleeping quarry
would leap forth to pay them voiceless homage; that

328 MR. SPRAGUE'S O&AT1ON,

their names would be handed down, from father to
son, the penman's theme, and the poet's inspiration ;
challenging, through countless years, the jubilant
praises of an emancipated people, and the plaudits
of an admiring world ! No ! They knew, only, that
the arm which should protect, was oppressing them,
and they shook it off; that the chalice presented to
their lips was a poisoned one, and they dashed it away.
They knew, only, that a rod was stretched over them
for their audacity ; and beneath this they vowed never
to bend, while a single pulse could beat the larum to
" rebellion." That rod must be broken, or they must
bleed ! And it was broken ! Led on by their Washing-
ton, the heroes went forth. Clothed in the panoply of
a righteous cause, they went forth boldly. Guarded
by a good Providence, they went forth triumphantly.
They labored, that we might find rest ; they fought, that
we might enjoy peace ; they conquered, that we might
inherit freedom !

You will not now expect a detail of the actions of
that eventful struggle. To the annalists of your coun-
try belongs the pleasing task of tracing the progress of
a revolution, the purest in its origin, and the most
stupendous in its consequences, that ever gladdened
the world. To their fidelity we commit the wisdom
which planned, and the valor which accomplished it.
The dust of every contested mound, of every rescued
plain, will whisper to them their duty, for it is dust that
breathed and bled; the hallowed dust of men who
would be free, or nothing.

There, in the sweet hour of eventide, the child of
sentiment will linger, and conjure up their martyr forms.
Heroes, with their garments rolled in blood, will mar-
shal round him. The thrilling fife-note, the drum's
heart-kindling beat, will again run down the shadowy
ranks; the short, commanding word, the fatal volley,
the dull death-groan, the glad hurrah ! again will brea'k
on his cheated ear. The battle that sealed his coun-
try's fate, his country's freedom, will rage before him in
all its dreadful splendor. And when the airy pageant of

AT BOSTON, JULY 4, 1825. 329

his fancy fades in the gathering mists, he will turn his
footsteps from the sacred field, with a warmer grati-
tude, and a deeper reverence for the gallant spirits who
resigned dear life, in defence of life's dear blessing.

The " feelings, manners arid principles" which led to
the declaration of the fourth of July, '76, shine forth
in the memorable language of its great author. He
and his bold brethren proclaimed that all men were
created equal, and endowed by their Creator with the
right of liberty ; that for the security of this right, gov-
ernment was instituted, and that when it violated its
trust, the governed might abolish it. That crisis, they
declared, had arrived ; and the injuries and usurpa-
tions of the parent country were no longer to be endur-
ed. Recounting the dark catalogue of abuses which
they had suffered, and appealing to the Supreme Judge
of the world for the rectitude of their intentions ; in the
name, and by the authority of the people, the only
fountain of legitimate power, they shook off forever
their allegiance to the British crown, and pronounced
the united colonies an Independent Nation!

What their " feelings, manners and principles" led
them to publish, their wisdom, valor, and perseverance
enabled them to establish. The blessings secured by
the Pilgrims and the Patriots, have descended to us.
In the virtue and intelligence of the inheritors we con-
fide for their duration. They who attained them have
left us their example, and bequeathed us their blood.
We shall never forget the one, unless we prove recreant
to the other. On the Dorick columns of religious and
civil liberty, a majestic temple has been reared, and
they who dwell within its walls, will never bow in
bondage to man, till they forget to bend in reverence
to God.

The achievement of American Independence was
not merely the separation of a few obscure colonies
from their parent realm ; it was the practical annuncia-
tion to created man, that he was created free ! and it
will stand in history, the epoch from which to compute
the real duration of political liberty. Intolerance and

330 MR. SPRAGUE'S ORATION,

tyranny had for ages leagued to keep their victim down.
While the former could remain the pious guardian
of his conscience, the latter knew it had nothing to
fear from his courage. He was theirs, soul and body.
His intellectual energies were paralyzed, that he
might not behold the corruptions of the church;
and his physical powers were fettered, that he could
not rise up against the abuses of the state. Thus
centuries of darkness rolled away. Light broke, from
time to time, but it only served to show the surround-
ing clouds; bright stars, here and there, looked out,
but they were the stars of a gloomy night. At length,
the morning dawned, when one generation of your an-
cestors willed that none but their Maker should guide
them in their duty as Christians ; and the perfect day
shone forth, when another declared that from none
but their Maker would they derive their immunities as
men. The world had seen the former secure a privi-
lege, whose original denial would have left their faith
asleep in its founder's sepulchre; and they now be-
held the latter in the enjoyment of rights, without,
which, their freedom would have been palsied at the
footstool of a monarch's throne.

If, in remembering the oppressed, you think the op-
pressors ought not to be forgotten. I might urge that
the splendid result of the great struggle should fully re-
concile us to the madness of those, who rendered that
struggle necessary. I can almost forgive the presump-
tion which " declared" its right " to bind the Ameri-
can colonies," for it was wofully expiated by the hu-
miliation which " acknowledged" those same " Ame-
rican colonies" to be " SOVEREIGN and INDEPENDENT
STATES." The immediate workers, too, of that poli-
tical iniquity have passed away. The mildew of
shame will forever feed upon their memories, and a
brand has been set upon their deeds, that even time's
all gnawing tooth can never destroy. But they have
passed away ; and of all the millions they misruled, the
millions they would have misruled, how few remain !
Another race is there to lament the follv, another hero

AT BOSTON, JULY 4, 1825. 331

to magnify the wisdom, that cut the knot of empire.
Shall these inherit and entail everlasting enmity?
Like the Carthagenian Hamilcar, shall we come up
hither with our children, and on this holy altar swear
the pagan oath of undying hate ? Even our goaded
fathers disdained this. Let us fulfil their words, and
prove to the people of England, that, " in peace," we
know how to treat them " as friends." They have
been twice told that, " in war," we know how to meet
them " as enemies ;" and they will hardly ask another
lesson, for it may be, that when the third trumpet shall
sound, a voice will echo along their sea-girt cliffs:
« The Glory has departed !"

Some few of their degenerate ones, tainting the bow-
ers where they sit, decry the growing greatness of a
land they will not love ; and others, after eating from
our basket, and drinking from our cup, go home to
pour forth the senseless libel against a people, at whose
firesides they were warmed. But a few pens, dipped
in gall, will not retard our progress; let not a few
tongues, festering in falsehood, disturb our repose.
We have thosQ among us, who are able both to pare
the talons of the kite, and pull out the fangs of the vi-
per ; who can lay bare, for the disgust of all good men,
the gangrene of the insolent reviewer, and inflict such a
cruel mark on the back of the mortified runaway, as
will long take from him the blessed privilege of being
forgotten.

These high arid low detractors speak not, we trust,
the feelings of their nation. Time, the great corrector,
is there fast enlightening both ruler and ruled. They
are treading in our steps, and gradually, though slowly,
pulling up their ancient religious and political land-
marks. Yielding to the liberal spirit of the age, a spirit
born and fostered here, they are not only loosening
their own long rivetted shackles, but are raising the
voice of encouragement, and extending the hand of as-
sistance, to the " rebels" of other climes.

In spite of all that has passed, we owe England
much; and even on this occasion, standing in the

332 MR. SPRAGUE'S ORATION,

midst of my generous-minded countrymen, I may fear-
lessly, willingly, acknowledge the debt. We owe Eng-
land much; nothing for her martyrdoms; nothing for
her proscriptions ; nothing for the innocent blood w ith
which she has stained the white robes of religion and
liberty — these claims our Fathers cancelled, and her
monarch rendered them and theirs a full acquittance
forever — but for the living treasures of her mind, gar-
nered up and spread abroad for centuries, by her great
and gifted. Who that has drank at the sparkling
streams of her poetry, who that has drawn from the
deep fountains of her wisdom ; who that speaks, and
reads, arid thinks her language, will be slow to own his
obligation ? .One of your purest, ascended patriots,*
he, who compassed sea and land for liberty, whose
early voice for her echoed round yonder consecrated
hall, whose dying accents for her went up in solitude
and suffering from the ocean ; — when he sat down to
bless with the last token of a father's remembrance,
the Son, who wears his mantle with his name, — be-
queathed him the recorded lessons of England's best
and wisest, and sealed the legacy of love with a prayer,
whose full accomplishment we live to witness : — " that
the spirit of LIBERTY might rest upon him."

While we bring our offerings for the mighty of our
own land, shall we not remember the chivalrous spirits
of other shores, who shared with them the hour of
weakness arid wo ? Pile to the clouds the majestic
columns of glory, let the lips of those who can speak
well, hallow each spot where the bones of your bold
repose ; but forget not those who with your bold went
out to battle.

Among these men of noble daring, there was ONE, a
oung and gallant stranger, who left the blushing vine-
ills of his delightful France. The people whom he
came to succor, were not his people ; he knew them
only in the wicked story of their wrongs. He was no

* See Life of Josiah Qiiincy, Jr. by his son, Josiah Quincy^
Mayor of Boston.

AT BOSTON, JULY 4, 1825. 333

mercenary wretch, striving for the spoil of the van-
quished ; the palace acknowledged him for its lord,
and the valley yielded him its increase. He was no
nameless man, staking life for reputation ; he ranked
among nobles, and looked unawed upon kings. He
was no friendless outcast, seeking for a grave to hide
his cold heart ; he was girdled by the companions of
his childhood, his kinsmen were about him, his wife
was before him.

Yet from all these he turned away, and came. Like
a lofty tree, that shakes down its green glories, to bat-
tle with the winter storm, he flung aside the trappings
of place and pride, to crusade for freedom, in freedom's
holy land. He came ; but not in the day of success-
ful rebellion, not when the new-risen sun of independ-
ence had burst the cloud of time, and careered to its
place in the heavens. He came when darkness cur-
tained the hills, and the tempest was abroad in its an-
ger; when the plough stood still in the field of promise,
and briers cumbered the garden of beauty ; when fa-
thers were dying, and mothers were weeping over
them ; when the wife was binding up the gashed bo-
som of her husband, and the maiden was wiping the
death damp from the brow of her lover. He came
when the brave began to fear the power of man, and
the pious to doubt the favor of God.

It was then, that this ONE joined the ranks of a re-
volted people. Freedom's little phalanx bade him a
grateful welcome. With them he courted the battle's
rage, with theirs his arm was lifted ; with theirs his
blood was shed. Long and doubtful was the conflict.
At length, kind heaven smiled on the good cause, and
the beaten invaders fled. The profane were driven
from the temple of liberty, and, at her pure shrine, the
pilgrim warrior, with his adored COMMANDER, knelt and
worshipped. Leaving there his offering, the incense
of an uncorrupted spirit, he at length rose up, and
crowned with benedictions, turned his happy feet to-
wards his long deserted home.

After nearly fifty years, that ONE has come again.

VOL. v. 43

334 MR. SPRAGUE'S ORATION,

Can mortal tongue tell, can mortal heart feel, the sub-
limity of that coming ? Exulting millions rejoice in it.
and their loud, long, transporting shout, like the min-

f'ing of many winds, rolls on, undying, to freedom's
rthest mountains. A congregated nation comes
round him. Old men bless him, and children reverence
him. The lovely come out to look upon him, the
learned deck their halls to greet him, the rulers of the
land rise up to do him homage. How his full heart
labors ! He views the rusting trophies of departed
days, he treads the high places where his brethren
moulder, he bends before the tomb of his " FATHER ;"
— his words are tears; the speech of sad remem-
brance. But he looks round upon a ransomed land,
and a joyous race, he beholds the blessings those tro-
phies secured, for which those brethren died, for
which that " FATHER" lived ; and again his words are
tears ; the eloquence of gratitude and joy.

Spread forth creation like a map; bid earth's dead
multitudes revive ; — and of all the pageant splendors
that ever glittered to the sun, when looked his burn-
ing eye on a sight like this ? Of all the myriads that
have come and gone, what cherished minion ever rul-
ed an hour like this ? Many have struck the redeem-
ing blow for their own freedom, but who, like this man,
has bared his bosom in the cause of strangers ? Oth-
ers have lived in the love of their own people, but who,
like this man, has drank his sweetest cup of welcome
with another? Matchless chief ! of glory's immortal
tablets, there is one for him, for him alone ! Oblivion
shall never shroud its splendor ; the everlasting flame
of liberty shall guard it, that the generations of men
may repeat the name recorded there, the beloved name
of LAFAYETTE !

They who endured the burden of the conflict, are
fast going to their rest. Every passing gale sighs
over another veteran's grave, and ere long, the last
sage, and the last old soldier of the revolution, will be
seen no more. Soon, too soon, will you seek in vain
for even one, who can tell you of that day of stout

AT BOSTON, JULY 4, 1825. 335

hearts and strong hands. You lately beheld, on yon-
der glorious hill, a group of ancient men, baring their
grey heads beneath the blaze of heaven ; but never
more at such a sight will your grateful hearts grow
soft. These will never again assemble on earth.
They have stood together in war, they have congre-
gated in peace, their next meeting will be in the fields
of eternity. They must shortly sleep in the bosom of
the land they redeemed, and in that land's renown will
alone be their remembrance.

Let us cherish those who remain to link the living
with the dead. Of these, let one thought, to-day, rest
on him, whose pen and fame this day has rendered im-
mortal. With him, too, now that the bitter feuds of a
bitter hour are forgotten, we may associate another^
the venerable successor of our WASHINGTON. Here
broke his morning radiance, and here yet linger his
evening beams.

" Sure the last end of the good man is peace !

" Night dews fall not more gently to the ground,

" Nor weary, worn-out winds expire so soft.

" Behold him, in the eventide of life,

" A life well-spent !

u By unperceived degrees he wears away,

" Yet, like the sun, seems larger at his setting !"

I look round in vain for two of your exalted patriots,,
who, on your last festival-day, sat here in the midst
of you ; for him, who then worthily wore the highest
honors you could bestow, who in your name greeted
your Nation's Guest, arid took him by the hand and
wept: for him, too, who devoted to your service a
youth of courage, and an age of counsel ; who long
ruled over you in purity and wisdom, and then, gently
shaking off his dignities, retired to his native shades,
laden with your love. They have both passed away,
and the tongues that bade the " Apostle of Liberty"
welcome, will never bid him farewell.

In the place of the Fathers shall be the children.-
To the seat which Eustis arid Brooks adorned^ the peo-

336 MR. SPRAGUE'S ORATION,

Ele of this state have united to elevate one, whom they
ave often delighted to honor. He sits where they
sat, who were laboring in the vineyard before he was
born. His name adds another bright stud to the gold-
en scutcheon of the Commonwealth. While his heart
warms with honest pride at the confidence so flatter-
ingly reposed in him, he will wisely remember what
that confidence expects from him, in the discharge of
his high trust Chosen by all, he will govern for all;
and thus sustaining his well-earned reputation, may he
live long in the affection of a generous people.

I shall not omit, on this occasion, to congratulate
you on the result of an election, which has recently
raised to the highest station in your republic, one of
your most distinguished citizens. While, however,
the ardent wishes of so many have been crowned by
this gratifying event, it is not to be forgotten, that there
are those among us, men of pure and patriotic minds,
who responded not Amen, to the general voice. I
should be ashamed of the feelings which would insult
theirs, by an unworthy exultation. The illustrious in-
dividual, whom the representatives of the nation have
pronounced " most worthy," would be the first to frown
upon it, as he has ever been among the first to ac-
knowledge the merits of his exalted competitors. To
the high minded friends of these, in common with us
all, this day and its rites belong; and I cannot violate
the trust confided to me, I will not subject myself to a
pang of regret, by the indulgence of language, which
should send a single being from this place, with a less
joyous spirit than he entered it. It is safer to be dull
than bitter, and I had rather you would all be willing
to forget the labor of this hour in charity, than that
one among you should feel compelled to remember it
in unkindness.

I have alluded to this event, not merely for the
purpose of obtruding upon you the expression of per-
sonal gratification, but because it offers another
striking proof of the stability of our free institutions.
Since the strife of 1800, we have not witnessed so via-

AT BOSTON, JULY 4, 1825. 337

lent a contest as this, through which we have lately
passed ; yet now, how quiet are become the elements
of discord. With a praiseworthy forbearance, all, or
nearly all, have bowed to the expression of the public
will, and seem determined, in the words of one of his
accomplished rivals, to judge the ruler of the nation,
" by his measures."

While this spirit triumphs, we have nothing to dread
from the animosities of party. However turbulent, they
will be harmless. Like the commotions of the physi-
cal world, they will be necessary. Far distant be the day.
when it must be said of this country, that it has no par-
ties, for it must be also said, if any one be bold enough
to say it, that it has no liberties. Let hawk-eyed jeal-
ousy, be forever on the alert, to watch the footsteps of
power. Let it be courteous in language, but stern and
unbending in principle. Whoever he may be, where-
ever he may be, that would strike at the people's rights,
let him hear the people's voice, proclaiming that " whom
it will, it can set up, and whom it will it can set down.''

Fear not party zeal, it is the salt of your existence.
There are no parties under a despotism. There, no
man lingers round a ballot-box ; no man drinks the
poison of a licentious press ; no man plots treason at a
debating society ; no man distracts his head about the
science of government. All there, is a calm, unruffled
sea; — even a dead sea of black and bitter waters.
But we move upon a living stream, forever pure, for-
ever rolling. Its mighty tide sometimes flows higher,
and rushes faster, than its wont, and as it bounds, and
foams, and dashes along in sparkling violence, it now
and then throws up its fleecy cloud ; but this rises only to
disappear, and as it fades away before the sunbeams of
intelligence and patriotism, you behold upon its bosom
the rainbow signal of returning peace, arching up to
declare that there is no danger.

And now, it is no vain speech to say, the eyes of the
world have been long upon us: For nearly fifty years
we have run the glorious race of empire. Friends have

338 MR. SPRAGUE'S ORATION,

gazed in fear, and foes in scorn ; but fear is lost in joy*
and scorn is turning to wonder. The great experi-
ment has succeeded. Mankind behold the spectacle
of a land, whose crown is wisdom, whose mitre is
purity, whose heraldry is talent ; a land, where public
sentiment is supreme, and where every man may erect
the pyramid of his own fair fame. They behold, they
believe, and they will imitate. The day is coming, when
thrones can no longer be supported by parchment
rolls. It is not a leaf of writing, signed and sealed by
three frail, mortal men, that can forever keep down suf-
fering millions ; these will rise ! they will point to an-
other scroll ; to that, of whose bold signers our THREE*
remain ; our THREE, whose " alliance" was, indeed, a
" holy" one, for it met the approving smile of a Holy
God!

Many must suffer defeat, and many must taste of
death, but freedom's battle will yet be fought and won.
As heaven unbinds the intellect of man, his own right
arm will rescue his body. Liberty will yet walk
abroad in the gardens of Europe. Her hand will
pluck the grapes of the south, her eye will warm the
snow-drifts of the north. The crescent will go down
in blood, from that " bright clime of battle and of
song," for which He died, that noble Briton, that war-
rior-bard, who raised his generous arm like La Fay-
ette, who struck his golden lyre to La Fayette's great
Leader!

And to this young land will belong the praise. The
struggling nations point to our example, and in their
own tongues repeat the cheering language of our
sympathy. Already, when a master-spirit towers
among them, they call him — their Washington.
Along the foot of the Andes, they breathe in grati-
tude the name of Clay;— by the ivy-buried ruins of
the Parthenon, they bless the eloquence of Webster I

* John Adams, Charles Carroll, Thomas Jefferson the surviving
signers of the Declaration of Independence.

AT BOSTON, JULY 4, 1825. 339

Fellow-Citizens, my imperfect task is ended. I have
told you an old tale, but you will forgive that, for it is
one of your country's glory. You will forgive me that
I have spoken of the simple creatures who were here
from the beginning, for it was to tell you how much
had been wrought for you by Piety : you will forgive
me that I have lingered round the green graves of the
dead, for it was to remind you how much had been
achieved for you by Patriotism. Forgive me, did I
say? Would you have forgiven me, if I had not done
this ? Could I, ought I, to have wasted this happy
hour in cold and doubtful speculation, while your bo-
soms were bounding with the holy throb of gratitude ?
Oh ! no ; — it was not for that you came up hither.
The- groves of learning, the halls of wisdom, you have
deserted ; the crowded mart, the chambers of beauty,
you have made solitary — that here, with free, exulting
voices, before the only throne at which the free can
bend, your hearts might pour forth their full, gushing
tribute to the benefactors of your country.

On that country heaven's highest blessings are de-
scending. I would not, for I need not, use the lan-
guage of inflation; but the decree has gone forth;
and as sure as the blue arch of creation is in beauty
above us, so sure will it span the mightiest dominion
that ever shook the earth. Imagination cannot out-
strip reality, when it contemplates our destinies as a
people. Where nature slept in her solitary loveliness,
villages, and cities, and states, have smiled into being.
A gigantic nation has been born. Labor and art are
adorning, and science is exalting, the land that religion
sanctified, and liberty redeemed. From the shores to
the mountains, from the regions of frost to the vallies
of eternal spring, myriads of bold and understanding
men are uniting to strengthen a government of their
own choice, and perpetuate the institutions of their
own creation.

The germe wafted over the ocean, has struck its

340 MR. SPRAGUE'S ORATION, &c.

deep root in the earth, and raised its high head to the
clouds.

Man looked in scorn, but Heaven beheld, and blessed

Its branchy glories, spreading o'er the West.

No summer gaude, the wonder of a day,

Born but to bloom, and then to fade away,

A giant oak, it lifts its lofty form,

Greens in the sun, and strengthens in the storm.

Long in its shade shall children's children come,

And welcome earth's poor wanderers to a home.

Long shall it live, and every blast defy,

Till time's last whirlwind sweep the vaulted sky. <.

AN ORATION,

DELIVERED

AT CAMBRIDGE, ON THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE
DECLARATION OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA:

BY EDWARD EVERETT.

FELLOW CITIZENS,

IT belongs to us with strong propriety, to celebrate
this day. The town of Cambridge, and the county of
Middlesex, are filled with the vestiges of the Revolu-
tion ; whithersoever we turn our eyes, we behold some
memento of its glorious scenes. Within the walls, in
which we are now assembled, was convened the first
provincial Congress, after its adjournment at Concord.
The rural magazine at Medford reminds us of one of
the earliest acts of British aggression. The march of
both divisions of the Royal army, on the memorable
nineteenth of April, was through the limits of Cam-
bridge; in the neighboring towns of Lexington and
Concord, the first blood of the Revolution was shed ;
in West Cambridge, the royal convoy of provisions
was, the same day, gallantly surprised by the aged ci-
tizens, who stayed to protect their homes, while their
sons pursued the foe. Here the first American army
was formed ; from this place, on the seventeenth of
June, was detached the Spartan band, that inlmor-
talized the heights of Charlestown, and consecrated
that day, with blood and fire, to the cause of Ameri-
can Liberty. Beneath the venerable elm, which still
shades the southwestern corner of the common, Gene-
ral Washington first unsheathed his sword at the head
of an American army, and to that seat* was wont every

* The first wall pew, on the right hand of the pulpit.
VOL. v. 44

342 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

Sunday to repair, to join in the supplications which
were made for the welfare of his country.

How changed is now the scene ! The foe is gone •
The din and the desolation of war are passed ; Sci-
ence has long resumed her station in the shades of
our venerable University, no longer glittering with
arms ; the anxious war-council is no longer in session,
to offer a reward for the discovery of the best mode of
making salt-petre, — an unpromising stage of hostili-
ties, when an army of twenty thousand men is in the
field in front of the foe ; the tall grass now waves in
the trampled sally-port of some of the rural redoubts,
that form a part of the simple lines of circumvallation,
within which a half-armed American . militia held the
flower of the British army blockaded; the plough has
done, what the English batteries could not do, — has
levelled others of them with the earth; and the Men,
the great and good men, their warfare is over, and they
have gone quietly down to the dust they redeemed
from oppression.

At the close of a half century, since the declaration
of our Independence, we are assembled to commemo-
rate that great and happy event. We come together,
not because it needs, but because it deserves these
acts of celebration. We do not meet each other, and
exchange our felicitations, because we should other-
wise fall into forgetfulness of this auspicious era ; but
because we owe it to our fathers and to our children.
to mark its return with grateful festivities. - The ma-
jor part of this assembly is composed of those, who
had not yet engaged in the active scenes of life, when
the Revolution commenced. We come not to applaud
our own work, but to pay a filial tribute to the deeds
of our fathers. It was for their children, that the
heroes and sages of the Revolution labored and bled.
They were too wise not to know, that it was riot per-
sonally their own cause, in which they were embarked j
they felt that they were engaging in an enterprize,
which an entire generation must be too short to bring
to its mature and perfect issue. The most they could

AT CAMBRIDGE, JULY 4, 1826. -343

promise themselves was, that, having cast forth the
seed of liberty ; having shielded its tender germe from
the stern blasts that beat upon it ; having watered it
with the tears of waiting eyes, and the blood of brave
hearts ; their children might gather the fruit of its
branches, while those who planted it should moulder
in peace beneath its shade.

Nor was it only in this, that we discern their disin-
terestedness, their heroic forgetfulness of self. Not
only was the independence, for which they struggled,
a great and arduous adventure, of which they were to
encounter the risk, and others to enjoy the benefits ;
but the oppressions, which roused them, had assumed,
in their day, no worse form than that of a pernicious
principle. No intolerable acts of oppression had
ground them to the dust. They were not slaves,
rising in desperation from beneath the agonies of the
lash ; but free men, snuffing from afar " the tainted
gale of tyranny." The worst encroachments, on
which the British ministry had ventured, might have
been borne, consistently with the practical enjoyment
of many of the advantages resulting from good gov-
ernment. On the score of calculation alone, that ge-
neration had much better have paid the duties on
glass, painter's colors, stamped paper, and tea, than
have plunged into the expenses of the Revolutionary
war. But they thought not of shuffling off upon pos-
terity the burden of resistance. They well understood
the part, which Providence had assigned to them.
They perceived that they were called to discharge a
high and perilous office to the cause of Freedom;
that their hands were elected to strike the blow, for
which near two centuries of preparation — never re-
mitted, though often unconscious — had been making,
on one side or the other, of the Atlantic. They felt
that the colonies had now reached that stage in their
growth, when the difficult problem of colonial govern-
ment must be solved; difficult, I call it, for such it is,
to the statesman, whose mind is not sufficiently enlarg-
ed for the idea, that a wise colonial government must

344 ^IR- EVERETT'S ORATION,

naturally and rightfully end in independence; that
even a mild and prudent sway, on the part of the
mother country, furnishes no reason for not severing
the bands of the colonial subjection ; and that when
the rising state has passed the period of adolescence,
the only alternative which remains, is that of a peacea-
ble separation, or a convulsive rupture.

The British ministry, at that time weaker than it
had ever been since the infatuated reign of James II.
had no knowledge of political science, but that which
they derived from the text of official records. They
drew their maxims, as it was happily said of one of
them, that he did his measures, from the file. They
heard that a distant province had resisted the execu-
tion of an act of parliament. Indeed, and what is the
specific, in cases of resistance ? — a military force ; —
and two more regiments are ordered to Boston,
Again they hear, that the General Court of Massa-
chusetts Bay has taken counsels subversive of the al-
legiance due to the crown. A case of a refractory
corporation ; — what is to be done ? First try a man-
damus ; and if that fails, seize the franchises into his
Majesty's hands. They never asked the great ques-
tions, whether nations, like man, have not their princi-
ples of growth ; whether Providence has assigned no
laws to regulate the changes in the condition of that
most astonishing of human things, a nation of kindred
men. They did not inquire, I will not say whether it
were rightful and expedient, but whether it were prac-
ticable, to give law across the Atlantic, to a people
who possessed within themselves every imaginable
element of self-government ; — a people rocked in the
cradle of liberty, brought up to hardship, inheriting
nothing but their rights on earth, and their hopes in
heaven.

But though the rulers of Britain appear not to have
caught a glimpse of the great principles involved in
these questions, our fathers had asked and answered
them. They perceived, with the rapidity of intuition,
that the hour of separation had come ; because a prin-

AT CAMBRIDGE, JULY 4, 1826. 345

ciple was assumed by the British government, which
put an instantaneous check to the further growth of
liberty. Either the race of civilized man happily
planted on our shores, at first slowly and painfully
reared, but at length auspiciously multiplying in Ame-
rica, is destined never to constitute a free and inde-
pendent state; or these measures must be resisted,
which go to bind it in a mild but abject colonial vas-
salage. Either the hope must be forever abandoned,
the hope that had been brightening and kindling to-
ward assurance, like the glowing skies of the morn-
ing,— the hope that a new centre of civilization was to
be planted on the new continent, at which the social
and political institutions of the world may be brought
to the standard of reason and truth, after thousands
of years of degeneracy, — either this hope must be
abandoned, and forever, or the battle was now to be
fought, first in the political assemblies, and then, if
need be, in the field.

In the halls of legislation, scarcely can it be said
that the battle was fought. A spectacle indeed seem-
ed to be promised to the civilized world, of breathless
interest and uncalculated consequence. " You are
placed," said the provincial Congress of Massachu-
setts, in their address to the inhabitants, of December
4th, 1774, an address promulgated at the close of a
session held in this very house, where we are now con-
vened, " You are placed by Providence in a post of
honor, because it is a post of danger ; and while
struggling for the noblest objects, the liberties of our
country, the happiness of posterity, and the rights of
human nature, the eyes, not only of North America
and the whole British empire, but of all Europe, are
upon you."* A mighty question of political right was
at issue, between the two hemispheres. Europe and
America, in the face of mankind, are going to plead
the great cause, on which the fate of popular govern-
ment forever is suspended. One circumstance, and

* Massachusetts State Papers, p. 416.

346 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

one alone exists, to diminish the interest of the con-
tention— the perilous inequality of the parties— an ine-
quality far exceeding that, which givjes animation to a
contest ; and so great as to destroy the hope of an
ably waged encounter. On the one side, were array-
ed the two houses of the British parliament, the mo-
dern school of political eloquence, the arena where
great minds had for a century and a half strenuously
wrestled themselves into strength and power,, and in
better days the common and upright chancery of an
empire, on which the sun never set. Upon the other
side, rose up the colonial assemblies of Massachusetts
and Virginia, and the continental congress of Phila-
delphia, composed of men whose training had been
within a small provincial circuit; who had never be-
fore felt the inspiration, which the consciousness of a
station before the world imparts ; who brought no pow-
er into the contest but that which they drew from their
cause and their bosoms. It is by champions like these,
that the great principles of representative government,
of chartered rights, and constitutional liberty, are to be
discussed ; and surely never, in the annals of national
controversy, was exhibited a triumph so complete of
the seemingly weaker party, a rout so disastrous of the
stronger. Often as it has been repeated, it will bear an-
other repetition; it never ought to be omitted in the his-
tory of constitutional liberty ; it ought especially to be
repeated this day ; — the various addresses, petitions,
and appeals, the correspondence, the resolutions, the le-
gislative and popular debates, from 1764, to the decla-
ration of independence, present a maturity of political
wisdom, a strength of argument, a gravity of style, a
manly eloquence, and a moral courage, of which un-
questionably the modern world affords no other exam-
ple. This meed of praise, substantially accorded at
the time by Chatham, in the British parliament, may
well be repeated by us. For most of the venerated
men to whom it is paid, it is but a pious tribute to de-
parted worth. The Lees and the Henrys, Otis, Quin-
cy. Warren, and Samuel Adams, the men who spoke

AT CAMBRIDGE, JULY 4, 1826. 347-

those words of thrilling power, which raised and ruled
the storm of resistance, and rang like the voice of fate
across the Atlantic, are beyond the reach of our praise.
To most of them it was granted to witness some of
the fruits of their labors ; such fruit as revolutions do
not often bear. Others departed at an untimely hour,
or nobly fell in the onset ; too soon for their country,
too soon for liberty, too soon for every thing but their
own undying fame. But all are not gone ; some still
survive among us; the favored, enviable men, to hail
the jubilee of the independence they declared. Go
back, fellow citizens, to that day, when Jefferson and
Adams composed the sub-committee, who reported
the Declaration of Independence. Think of the min-
gled sensations of that proud but anxious day, com-
pared to the joy of this. What honor, what crown,
what treasure, could the world and all its kingdoms
afford, compared with the honor and happiness of hav-
ing been united in that commission, and living to see
its most wavering hopes turned into glorious reality.
Venerable men! you have outlived the dark days, which
followed your more than heroic deed ; you have out-
lived your own strenuous contention, who should stand
first among the people, whose liberty you vindicated.
You have lived to bear to each other the respect, which
the nation bears to you both ; and each has been so
happy as to exchange the honorable name of the lead-
er of a party, for that more honorable one, the Father
of his Country. While this our tribute of respect, on
the jubilee of our independence, is paid to the gray
hairs of the venerable survivor in OUT neighborhood ;
let it not less heartily be sped to him, whose hand
traced the lines of that sacred charter, which, to the
end of time, has made this day illustrious. And is an
empty profession of respect all that we owe to the
man, who can show the original draught of the Decla-
ration of the Independence of the United States of Ame-
rica, in his own handwriting ? Ought riot a title-deed
like this to become the acquisition of the nation ?

-348 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

Ought it not to be laid up in the archives of the peo-
ple ? Ought not the price, at which it is bought, to be
the ease and comfort of the old age of him who drew
it ? Ought not he, who at the age of thirty declared
the independence of his country, at the age of eighty,
to be secured by his country in the enjoyment of his
own?

Nor let us forget, on the return of this eventful day,
the men, who, when the conflict of counsel was over,
stood forward in that of arms. Yet let me not by
faintly endeavoring to sketch, do deep injustice to the
story of their exploits. The efforts of a life would
scarce suffice to paint out this picture, in all its aston-
ishing incidents, in all its mingled colors of sublimity
and woe, of agony and triumph. But the age of com-
memoration is at hand. The voice of our fathers'
blood begins to cry to us, from beneath the soil which
it moistened. Time is bringing forward, in their pro-
per relief, the men and the deeds of that high-souled
day. The generation of contemporary worthies is gone ;
the crowd of the unsignalized great and good disap-
pears; and the leaders in war as well as council, are
seen, in Fancy's eye, to take their stations on the mount
of Remembrance. They come from the embattled
cliffs of Abraham ; they start from the heaving sods
of Bunker's Hill ; they gather from the blazing lines of
Saratoga and Yorktown, from the blood-dyed waters
of the Brandy wine, from the dreary snows of Valley
Forge, and all the hard fought fields of the war. With
all their wounds and all their honors, they rise and plead
with us, for their brethren who survive -, and bid us, if
indeed we cherish the memory of those, who bled in
our cause, to show our gratitude, not by sounding
words, but by stretching out the strong arm of the
country's prosperity, to help the veteran survivors
gently down to their graves.

But it is time to turn from sentiments, on which it
is unavailing to dwell. The fiftieth return of this a'l-
important day, appears to enjoin on us to reassert the

AT CAMBRIDGE, 1826. 349

principles of the Declaration of Independence. Have
we met, fellow citizens, to commemorate merely the
successful termination of a war ? Certainly not ; the
war of 1756 was, in its duration, nearly equal, and sig-
nalized in America by the most brilliant achievements
of the provincial arms. But no one would attempt to
prevent that war, with all its glorious incidents, from
gradually sinking into the shadows, which time throws
back on the deeds of men. Do we celebrate the anni-
versary of our independence, merely because a vast
region was severed from an European empire, and
established a government for itself? Scarcely even
this ; the acquisition of Louisiana, a region larger than
the old United States, — the almost instantaneous con-
version of a vast Spanish colonial waste, into free
and prosperous members of our republican federation,
— the whole effected by a single happy exercise of the
treaty-making power, — this is an event, in nature not
wholly unlike, in importance not infinitely beneath the
separation of the colonies from England, regarded
merely as a historical transaction. But no one thinks
of commemorating with festivals the anniversary of
this cession ; perhaps not ten who hear me recollect
the date of the treaty by which it was effected ; al-
though it is unquestionably the most important occur-
rence in our history, since the declaration of independ-
ence, and will render the administration of Mr. Jef-
ferson memorable, as long as our republic shall en-
dure.

But it is not merely nor chiefly the military success
nor the political event, which we commemorate on
these patriotic anniversaries. It is to mistake the prin-
ciple of our celebration to speak of its object, either as
a trite theme, or as one among other important and as-
tonishing incidents, of the same kind, in the world. The
declaration of the independence of the United States
of America, considered, on the one hand, as the con-
summation of a long train of measures and counsels —
preparatory, even though unconsciously, of this event,

VOL. v. 45

350 MK. EVERETT'S ORATION,

and on the other hand, as the foundation of the sys-
tems of government, which have happily been esta-
blished in our beloved country, deserves commemora-
tion, as the most important event, humanly speaking,
in the history of the world ; as forming the era, from
which the establishment of government on a rightful
foundation is destined universally to date. Looking
upon the declaration of independence as the one
prominent event, which is to represent the American
system, (and history will so look upon it,) I deem it
right in itself and seasonable this day to assert, that,
while all other political revolutions, reforms, and im-
provements have been in various ways of the nature of
palliatives and alleviations of systems essentially and
irremediably vicious, this alone is the great discovery
in political science; the Newtonian theory of govern-
ment, toward which the minds of all honest and saga-
cious statesmen in other times had strained, but with-
out success ; the practical fulfilment of all the theories
of political perfection, which had amused the specula-
tions and eluded the grasp of every former period and
people. And although assuredly this festive hour af-
fords but little scope for dry disquisition, and shall not
be engrossed by me with abstract speculation, yet I
shall not think I wander from the duties of the day, in
dwelling briefly on the chain of ideas, by which we
reach this great conclusion.

The political organization of a people is of all mat-
ters of temporal concernment the most important.
Drawn together into that great assemblage, which we
call a nation, by the social principle, some mode of or-
ganization must exist among men ; and on that organi-
zation depends more directly, more collectively, more
permanently, than on any thing else, the condition of
the individual members that make up the community.
On the political organization, in which a people shall
for generations have been reared, it mainly depends,
whether we shall behold in one of the brethren of the
human family the New Hollander, making a nauseous
meal from the worms which he extracts from a piece

AT CAMBRIDGE, JULY 4, 1826.

of rotten wood;* or the African cutting out the under
jaw of his captive to be strung on a wire, as a trophy
of victory, while the mangled wretch is left to bleed
to death, on the field of battle ;t or whether we shall
behold him social, civilized, Christian ; scarcely faded
from that perfect image, in which at the divine pur-
pose, «• Let us make man,"

•• in beauty clad,

With health in every vein,

And reason throned upon his brow,

Stepped forth immortal man."

I am certainly aware that between the individuals,
that compose a nation, and the nation as an organized
body, there are action and reaction ; — that if political
institutions affect the individual, individuals are some-
times gifted with power, and seize on opportunities,
most essentially to modify institutions ; nor am I at all
disposed to agitate the scholastic question, which was
first, in the order of nature or time, men forming govern-
ments or governments determining the condition of men.
But having long acted and reacted upon each other, it
needs no argument to prove, that political institutions get
to be infinitely the most important agent in fixing the
condition of individuals, and even in determining in what
manner and to what extent individual capacity shall be
exerted and individual character formed. While other
causes do unquestionably operate, — some of them,
such as national descent, physical race, climate, and
geographical position, very powerfully ; yet of none of
them is the effect constant, uniform and prompt; —
while I believe it is impossible to point out an impor-
tant change in the political organization of people, a
change by which it has been rendered more or less
favorable to liberty, without discovering a correspond-
ent effect on their prosperity.

* Malthus's Essay on Population, vol. i. p. 33, Amer. cd.
t Edwards's History of the West Indies, vol. ii. p. 68, 3d ed.

352 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

Such is the infinite importance to the nations of men
of the political organization which prevails among
them. The most momentous practical question there-
fore of course is, in what way a people shall determine
the political organization under which it will live ; or
in still broader terms, what is a right foundation of
government Till the establishment of the American
constitutions, this question had received but one an-
swer in the world ; I mean but one, which obtained
for any length of time and among any numerous peo-
ple ; and that answer was, force. The right of the
strongest was the only footing on which the govern-
ments of the ancient and modern nations were in fact
placed ; and the only effort of the theorists was, to dis-
guise the simple and somewhat startling doctrine of
the right of the strongest, by various mystical or popu-
lar fictions, which in no degree altered its real nature.
Of these the only two worthy to detain us, on the pre-
sent occasion, are those of the two great English poli-
tical parties, the whigs and the tories, as they are called,
by names not unlike, in dignity and significance, to the
doctrines which are designated by them. The tories
taught that the only foundation of government was
« divine right ;" and this is the same notion, which is
still inculcated on the continent of Europe ; though
the delicate ears of the age are flattered by the some-
what milder term, legitimacy. The whigs maintain-
ed, that the foundation of government was an " original
contract ;" but of this contract the existing organiza-
tion was the record and the evidence ; and the obliga-
tion was perpetually binding. It may deserve the pass-
ing remark, therefore, that in reality the doctrine of
the whigs in England is a little less liberal than that
of the tories. To say that the will of God is the war-
rant, by which the king and his hereditary counsellors
govern the land, is, to be sure, in a practical sense,
what the illustrious sage of the revolution, surviving in
our neighborhood, dared as early as 1765, to pronounce
it, " dark ribaldry." But in a merely speculative sense
it may, without offence, be said, that government, like

AT CAMBRIDGE, JULY 4, 1826. 353

every thing else, subsists by the Divine will ; and in
this acceptation, there is a certain elevation and unc-
tion in the sentiment. But to say that the form of gov-
ernment is matter of original compact with the peo-
ple ; that my ancestors, ages ago, agreed that they and
their posterity, to the end of time, should give up to a
certain line of princes the rule of the state ; that no
right remains of revising this compact ; that nothing
but extreme necessity, a necessity which it is treasona-
ble even to attempt to define beforehand, justifies a
departure from this compact, in which no provision is
made that the will of the majority should be done, but
the contrary ; — a doctrine like this, as it seems to me,
while it is in substance as servile as the other, has the
disadvantage of aifecting a liberality not borne out by
the truth.

And now, fellow citizens. I think I speak the words
of truth and soberness, without color or exaggeration,
when I say, that before the establishment of our Ame-
rican constitutions, this tory doctrine of the divine
right was the most common, and this whig doctrine of
the original contract was professedly the most liberal
doctrine, ever maintained by any political party in any
powerful state. I do not mean that in some of the
little Grecian republics, during their short-lived noon
of liberty and glory, nothing better was practised; nor
that, in other times and places, speculative politicians
had not in their closets dreamed of a belter founda-
tion of government. But I do mean, that, whereas the
whigs in England are the party of politicians who have
enjoyed, by general consent, the credit of inculcating a
more liberal system, this precious notion of the com-
pact is the extent to which their liberality went.

It is plain, whichever of these solemn phrases—" di*
vine right" or " original compact" — we may prefer to
use, that the right of the strongest lies at the founda-
tion of both, in the same way and to the same degree.
The doctrine of the divine right gives to the ruler au-
thority to sustain himself against the people, not mere-
ly because resistance is unlawful, but because it is sa-

354 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

crilegious. The doctrine of the compact denounces
every attempted change in the person of the prince as
a breach of faith, and as such also not only treasona-
ble but immoral. When a conflict ensues, force alone,
of course, decides which party shall prevail ; and
when force has so decided, all the sanctions of the di-
vine will and of the social compact revive in favor of
the successful party. Even the statute legislation of
England, although somewhat coy of unveiling the
chaste mysteries of the common law, allows the suc-
cessful usurper to claim the allegiance of the subject,
in as full a manner as it could be done by a lawful
sovereign.

Nothing is wanting to fill up this sketch of other
governments, but to consider what is the form in
which force is exercised to sustain them ; and this is
that of a standing army ; — at this moment, the chief
support of every government on earth, except our own.
As popular violence, — the unrestrained and irresisti-
ble force of the mass of men, long oppressed and late
awakened, and bursting in its wrath all barriers of law
and humanity, — is unhappily the usual instrument by
which the intolerable abuses of a corrupt government
are removed; so the same blind force of the same
fearful multitude, designedly kept in ignorance both of
their duty and their privileges as citizens, employed in
a form somewhat different indeed, but far more dread-
ful, that of a mercenary standing army, is the instru-
ment by which corrupt governments are sustained.
The deplorable scenes which marked the earlier stages
of the French revolution have called the attention of
this age to the fearful effects of popular violence ; and
the minds of men have recoiled at the dismay which
leads the van, and the desolation which marks the
progress of an infuriated mob. But the power of the
mob is transient ; the rising sun most commonly scat-
ters its mistrustful ranks ; the difficulty of subsistence
drives its members asunder; and it is only while it ex-
ists in mass, that it is terrible. But there is a form, in
which the mob is indeed portentous ; when to all its

AT CAMBRIDGE, JULY 4, 1826. 355

native terrors it adds the force of a frightful perma-
nence ; when, by a regular organization, its strength
is so curiously divided, and by a strict discipline its
parts are so easily combined, that each and every por-
tion of it carries in its presence the strength and ter-
ror of the whole; and when, instead of that want of
concert which renders the common mob incapable of
arduous enterprises, it is despotically swayed by a sin-
gle master mind, and may be moved in array across
the globe.

I remember to have seen the two kinds of mob
brought into direct collision. I was present at the se-
cond great meeting of the populace of London, in 1819,
in the midst of a crowd of I know not how many thou-
sands, but assuredly a vast multitude, which was ga-
thered together in Smithfield market. The universal
distress, as you recollect, was extreme ; it was a short
time after the scenes at Manchester, at which men's
minds were ulcerated; — deaths by starvation were
said not to be rare ; — ruin by the stagnation of business
was general; — and some were already brooding over
the dark project of assassinating the ministers, which
was not long after matured by Thistlewood and his
associates ; some of whom, on the day to which I al-
lude, harangued this excited, desperate, starving as-
semblage. When I considered the state of feeling
prevailing in the multitude around me — when I looked
in their lowering faces — heard their deep indignant ex-
clamations— reflected on the physical force concen-
trated, probably that of thirty or forty thousand able-
bodied men ; and added to all this, that they were as-
sembled to exercise an undoubted privilege of British
citizens; I did suppose that any small number of
troops, who should attempt to interrupt them, would
be immolated on the spot. While I was musing on
these things, and turning in my mind the common-
places on the terrors of a mob, a trumpet was heard
to sound — an uncertain, but a harsh and clamorous
blast. I looked that the surrounding stalls should
have furnished the unarmed multitude at least with

356 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

that weapon, with which Virginias sacrificed his daugh-
ter to the liberty of Rome ; I looked that the flying
pavement should begin to darken the air. Another
blast is heard — a cry of " The horseguards !" ran
through the assembled thousands ; the orators on the
platform were struck mute; and the whole of that
mighty host of starving, desperate men incontinently
took to their heels ; in which, I must confess — feeling
no vocation, in that cause to be faithful found, among
the faithless — I did myself join them. We had run
through the Old Bailey and reached Ludgate hill, be-
fore we found out, that we had been put to flight by a
single mischievous tool of power, who had come tri-
umphing down the opposite street on horseback, blow-
ing a stage-coachman's horn.

We have heard of those midnight scenes of desola-
tion, when the populace of some overgrown capital,
exhausted by the extremity of political oppression, or
famishing at the gates of luxurious palaces, or kindled
by some transport of fanatical zeal, rushes out to find
the victims of its fury ; the lurid glare of torches, cast-
ing their gleams on faces dark with rage ; the ominous
din of the alarm bell, striking with affright, on the
broken visions of the sleepers; the horrid yells, the
thrilling screams, the multitudinous roar of the living
storm, as it sweeps onward to its objects ; — but oh,
the disciplined, the paid, the honored mob ; not mov-
ing in rags and starvation to some act of blood or
plunder ; but marching, in all the pomp and circum-
stance of war, to lay waste a feebler state ; or canton-
ed at home among an overawed and broken-spirited
people! I have read of granaries plundered, of cas-
tles sacked, and their inmates cruelly murdered, by
the ruthless hands of the mob. I have read of friendly
states ravaged, governments overturned, tyrannies
founded and upheld, proscriptions executed, fruitful
regions turned into trampled deserts, the tide of civili-
zation thrown back, and a line of generations cursed,
by a well organized system of military force.

Such was the foundation in theory and in practice

'Ji

AT CAMBRIDGE, JULY 4, 1826 357

of all the governments, which can be considered as
having had a permanent existence in the world, before
the Revolution in this country. There are certainly
shades of difference between the oriental despotisms,
ancient and modern — the military empire of Rome—
the feudal sovereignties of the middle ages — and the
legitimate monarchies of the present day. Some
were and are more, and some less, susceptible of
melioration in practice ; and of all of them it might
perhaps be said — being all in essence bad,

" That, which is best administered, is best."

In no one of these governments, nor in any govern-
ment, was the truth admitted, that the only just foun-
dation of all government is the will of the people. If
it ever occurred to the practical or theoretical politi-
cian, that such an idea deserved examination, the ex-
periment was thought to have been made in the re-
publics of Greece, and to have failed, as fail it cer-
tainly did, from the physical impossibility of conduct-
ing the business of the state by the actual intervention
of every citizen. Such a plan of government must of
course fail, if for no other reason, at least for this, that
it would prevent the citizen from pursuing his own bu-
siness, which it is the object of all government to ena-
ble him to do. It was considered then as settled, that
the citizens, each and all, could not be the . govern-
ment ; some one or more must discharge its duties
for them. Who shall do this ; — how shall they be de-
signated ?

The first king was a fortunate soldier, and the first
nobleman was one of his generals ; and government
has passed by descent to their posterity, with no other
interruption, than has taken place, when some new
soldier of fortune has broken in upon this line of suc-
cession, in favor of himself and of his generals. The
people have passed for nothing in the plan ; and when-
ever it has occurred to a busy genius to put the ques-
tion, By what right government is thus exercised and

VOL. v. 46

358 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

transmitted ? the common answer has been, By Divine
right; while, in times of rare illumination, men have
been consoled with the assurance, that such was the
original contract.

But a brighter day and a better dispensation were
in reserve. The founders of the feudal system, bar-
barous, arbitrary, and despotic as they were, and pro-
foundly ignorant of political science, were animated
themselves with a spirit of personal liberty ; out of
which, after ages of conflict, grew up a species of po-
pular representation. In the eye of the feudal system,
the king was the first baron, and standing within his
own sphere, each other baron was as good as the first.
From this important relation, in which the feudal lords
of England claimed to stand to their prince, arose the
practice of their being consulted by him, in great and
difficult conjunctures of affairs ; and hence the co-ope-
ration of a grand council, (subsequently convened in
two houses under the name of parliament,) in making
the laws and administering the government The for-
mation of this body has proved a great step in the pro-
gress of popular rights ; its influence has been deci-
sive in breaking the charm of absolute monarchy, and
giving to a body, partially eligible by the people, a share
in the government. It has also operated most auspi-
ciously on liberty, by exhibiting to the world, on the
theatre of a conspicuous nation, a living example, that
in proportion as the rights and interests of a people
are represented in a government, in that degree the
state becomes strong and prosperous. Thus far the
science and the practice of government had gone in
England, and here it had come to a stand. An equal
representation, even in the House of Commons, was
unthought of; or thought of only as one of the ex-
ploded abominations of Cromwell. It is asserted by
Mr. Hume, writing about the middle of the last centu-
ry, and weighing this subject with equal moderation
and sagacity, that " the tide has run long and with
some rapidity to the side of popular government, and
is just beginning to turn toward monarchy." And he

AT CAMBRIDGE, JULY 4, 1826. 359

maintains that the British constitution is, though
slowly, yet gradually verging toward an absolute gov-
ernment*

Such was the state of political science, when the
independence of our country was declared, and its
constitutions organized on the basis of that declaration.
The precedents in favor of a popular system were sub-
stantially these, the short-lived prosperity of the repub-
lics of Greece, where each citizen took part in the
conduct of affairs; arid the admission into the British
government, of one branch of the legislature nominally
elective, and operating, rather by opinion than power,
as a partial check on the other branches. What lights
these precedents gave them, our fathers had ; beyond
this, they owed every thing to their own wisdom and
courage, in daring to carry out and apply to the exe-
cutive branch of the government that system of dele-
gated power, of which the elements existed in their
own provincial assemblies. They assumed, at once,
not as a matter to be reached by argumentation, but
as the dictate of unaided reason — as an axiom too
obvious to be discussed, though never in practice ap-
plied— that where the state is too large to be governed
by an actual assembly of all the citizens, the people
shall elect those, who will act for them, in making the
laws and administering the government. They, there-
fore, laid the basis of their constitutions in a propor-
tionate delegation of power, from every part of the
community ; and regarding the declaration of our In-
dependence as the true era of our institutions, we are
authorized to assert, that from that era dates the esta-
blishment of the only perfect organization of govern-
ment,,that of a Representative Republic, administered
by persons freely chosen by the people.

This plan of government is therefore, in its theory,
perfect ; and in its operation it is perfect also ; — that
is to say, no measure of policy, public or private, do-
mestic or foreign, can long be pursued, against the

* Hume's Essays, vol. I.

. EVERETT'S ORATION,

will of a majority of the people. Farther than this
the wisdom of government cannot go. The majority
of the people may err. Man collectively as well as
individually, is man still; but whom can you more
safely trust than the majority of the people ; who is so
likely to be right, always right, and altogether right,
as the collective majority of a great nation, represent-
ed in all its interests and pursuits, and in all its com-
munities ?

Thus has been solved the great problem in human
affairs ; and a frame of government, perfect in its prin-
ciples, has been brought down from the airy regions of
Utopia, and has found 4 a local habitation and a name'
in our country. Henceforward we have only to strive
that the practical operation of our systems may be
true to their spirit and theory. Henceforth it may be
said of us, what never could have been said of any
people, since the world began, — be our sufferings what
they will, no one can attribute them to our frame of
government ; no one can point out a principle in our
political systems, of which he has had reason to com-
plain ; no one can sigh for a change in his country's
institutions, as a boon to be desired for himself or for
his children. There is not an apparent defect in our
constitutions which could be removed without intro-
ducing a greater one ; nor a real evil, whose removal
would not be rather a nearer approach to the princi-
ples on which they are founded, than a departure from
them.

And what, fellow citizens, are to be the fruits to us
and to the world, of the establishment of this perfect
system of government ? I might partly answer the
inquiry, by reminding you what have been the fruits to
us and to the world ; by inviting you to compare our
beloved country, as it is, in extent of settlement, in
numbers and resources, in the useful and ornamental
arts, in the abundance of the common blessings of life,
in the general standard of character, in the means of
education, in the institutions for social objects, in the
various great industrious interests, in public strength

AT CAMBRIDGE, JULY 4,* 1826. 361

and national respectability, with what it was in all these
respects fifty years ago. But the limits of this occa-
sion will not allow us to engage in such an enumera-
tion ; and it will be amply sufficient for us to contem-
plate, in its principle, the beneficial operation on socie-
ty, of the form of government bequeathed to us by our
fathers. This principle is Equality; the equal enjoy-
ment by every citizen of the rights and privileges of
the social union.

The principle of all other governments is monopoly,
exclusion, favx>r. They secure great privileges to a
small number, and necessarily at the expense of all the
rest of the citizens.

In the keen conflict of minds, which preceded and
accompanied the political convulsions of the last gene-
ration, the first principles of society were canvassed
with a boldness and power before unknown in Europe,
and, from the great principle that all men are equal, it
was for the first time triumphantly inferred, as a neces-
sary consequence, that the will of a majority of the
people is the rule of government. To meet these doc-
trines, so appalling in their tendency to the existing
institutions of Europe, new ground was also taken by
the champions of those institutions, and particularly
by a man, whose genius, eloquence, and integrity gave
a currency, which nothing else could have given, to
his splendid paradoxes and servile doctrines. In one
of his renowned productions,* this great man, for great,
even in his errors, most assuredly he was, in order to
meet the inferences drawn from the equality of man,
that the will of the majority must be the rule of go-
verrimerit, has undertaken, as he says, " to fix, with
some degree of distinctness, an idea of what it is we
mean when we say the PEOPLE ;" and in fulfilment of
this design, he lays it down, " that in a state of rude
nature, there is no such thing as a people. A number
of men, in themselves, can have no collective capacity.
The idea of a people is the idea of a corporation, it is

* The appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.

362 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION.

wholly artificial ; and made, like all other legal fictions,
by common agreement."

"In a state of rude nature, there is no such thing as
a people !" I would fain learn in what corner of the
earth, rude or civilized, men are to be found, who are
not a people, more or less improved. " A number of
men in themselves have no collective capacity !" I
would gladly be told where, in what region, I will not
say of geography, I know there is none such, but of
poetry or romance, a number of men has been placed,
by nature, each standing alone, and not bound by any
of those ties of blood, affinity and language, which
form the rudiments of a collective capacity. u The idea
of a people is the idea of a corporation, it is wholly ar-
tificial, and made like all other legal fictions, by com-
mon agreement." Indeed, is the social principle artifi-
cial ? Is the gift of articulate speech, which enables
man to impart his condition to man, the organized
sense, which enables him to comprehend what is im-
parted— is that sympathy, which subjects our opin-
ions and feelings, and through them our conduct, to
the influence of others and their conduct to our in-
fluence— is that chain of cause and effect, which
makes our characters receive impressions from the
generations before us, and puts it in our power, by a
good or bad precedent, to distil a poison or a balm into
the characters of posterity — are these, indeed, all
by-laws of a corporation ? Are all the feelings of an-
cestry, posterity, and fellow citizenship ; all the charm,
veneration, and love, bound up in the name of
country; the delight, the enthusiasm, with which we
seek out, after the lapse of generations and ages, the
traces of our fathers' bravery or wisdom, are these all
" a legal fiction ?" Is it, indeed, a legal fiction, that
moistens the eye of the solitary traveller, when he
meets a countryman in a foreign land ? Is it a
" common agreement," that gives its meaning to my
mother tongue, and enables me to speak to the hearts
of my kindred men, beyond the rivers and beyond the
mountains ? Yes, it is a common agreement ; record-

AT CAMBRIDGE, JULY 4, 1826. 363

ed on the same registry with that, which marshals the
winged nations, that,

In common, ranged in figure, wedge their way,
Intelligent of seasons ; and set forth
Their airy caravan, high over seas
Flying, and over. lands, with mutual wing
Easing their flight.

The mutual dependence of man on man, family on
family, interest on interest, is but a chapter in the
great law, not of corporations, but of nature. The law,
by which commerce, manufactures, and agriculture
support each other, is the same law, in virtue of which
the thirsty earth owes its fertility to the rivers and the
rains ; and the clouds derive their high-travelling wa-
ters from the rising vapors; and the ocean is fed from
the secret springs of the mountains; arid the plant
that grows derives its increase from the plant that de-
cays ; and all subsist and thrive, not by themselves but
by others, in the great political economy of nature.
The necessary cohesion of the parts of the political
system is no more artificial, than the gravity of the
natural system, in which planet is bound to planet,
and all to the sun, and the sun to all. Insulate an in-
terest in society, a family, or a man, and all the facul-
ties and powers they possess will avail them little to-
ward the great objects of life ; in like manner, as not
all the mysteriously combined elements of the earth
around and beneath us, the light and volatile airs, that
fill the atmosphere; not the electric fluid, which lies
condensed and embattled in its cloudy magazines, or
subtilely diffused through creation ; not the volcanic
fires that rage in the earth's bosom, nor all her mines
of coal, and nitre and sulphur ; nor fountains of naphtha,
petroleum, or asphaltus ; — not all, combined and united,
afford one beam of that common light, which sends
man forth from his labors, and which is the sun's con-
tribution to the system, in which we live. And yet the
great natural system, the political, intellectual, moral

364 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

system, is artificial, as a legal fiction ! " O that mine
enemy had said it," the admirers of Mr. Burke may
well exclaim. O that some impious Voltaire, some
ruthless Rousseau had uttered it. Had uttered it!
Rousseau did utter the same thing ; and more rebuked
than any other error of this misguided genius, is his
doctrine of the Social Contract, of which Burke has
reasserted, and more than reasserted the principle, in
the sentences I have quoted.

But no, fellow citizens ; political society exists by
the law of nature. Man is formed for it ; every man
is formed for it; every man has an equal right to its
privileges, and to be deprived of them, under whatever
pretence, is so far to be reduced to slavery. The au-
thors of the Declaration of Independence saw this, and
taught that all men are born free and equal. On this
principle, our constitutions rest ; and no constitution
can bind a people on any other principle. No original
contract, that gives away this right, can bind any but
the parties to it. My forefathers could not, if they had
wished, have stipulated to their king, that his children
should rule over their children. By the introduction
of this principle of equality it is, that the Declaration
of Independence has at once effected a before unima-
gined extension of social privileges. Grant that no
new blessing (which, however, can by no means with
truth be granted,) be introduced into the world on
this plan of equality, still it will have discharged the
inestimable office of communicating, in equal propor-
tion, to all the citizens, those privileges of the social
union, which were before partitioned in an invidious
gradation, profusely among the privileged orders, and
parsimoniously among all the rest. Let me instance
in the right of suffrage. The enjoyment of this right
enters largely into the happiness of the social condi-
tion. I do not mean, that it is necessary to our happi-
ness actually to exercise this right at every election ;
but I say, the right itself to give our voice in the choice
of public servants, and the management of public af-
fairs, is so precious, so inestimable, that there is not

AT CAMBRIDGE, JULY 4, 1826. 365

a citizen who hears me, that would not lay down his
life to assert it. This is a right unknown in every
country but ours ; I say unknown, because in England*
whose institutions make the nearest approach to a
popular character, the elective suffrage is not only in-
credibly unequal and capricious in its distribution ; but
extends, after all, only to the choice of a minority of
one house of the legislature. Thus then the. people of
this country are, by their constitutions of government,
endowed with a new source of enjoyment, elsewhere
almost unknown ; a great and substantial happiness ;
an unalloyed happiness. Most of the desirable
things of life bear a high price in the world's market
Every thing usually deemed a great good, must, for its
attainment, be weighed down, in the opposite scale,
with what is as usually deemed a great evil — labor,
care, danger. It is only the unbought, spontaneous,
essential circumstances of our nature and condition,
that yield a liberal enjoyment. Our religious hopes,
intellectual meditations, social sentiments, family af-
fections, political privileges, these are springs of un-
purchased happiness ; and to condemn men to live un-
der an arbitrary government, is to cut them off from
nearly all the satisfactions, which nature designed
should flow from those principles within us, by which
a tribe of kindred men is constituted a people.

But it is not merely an extension to all the members
of society, of those blessings, which, under other sys-
tems, are monopolized by a few ; — great and positive
improvements, I feel sure, are destined to flow from
the introduction of the republican system. The first
of these will be, to make wars less frequent, and final-
ly to cause them to cease altogether. It was not a re-
publican, it was the subject of a monarchy, and no
patron of novelties, who said,

War is a game, which, were their subjects wise,
Kings would not play at.

A great majority of the wars, which haye desolated
VOL. v. 47

MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

mankind, have grown either out of the disputed titles
and rival claims of sovereigns, or their personal cha-
racter, particularly their ambition, or the character of
their favorites, or some other circumstance evidently
incident to a form of government which withholds from
the people the ultimate control of affairs. And the
more civilized men grow, strange as it may seem, the
more universally is this the case. In the barbarous
ages the people pursued war as an occupation ; its
plunder was more profitable, than their labor at home,
in the state of general insecurity. In modern times,
princes raise their soldiers by conscription, their sailors
by impressment, and drive them at the point of the
bayonet and dirk, into the battles they fight for rea-
sons of state. But in a republic, where the people, by
their representatives, must vote the declaration of
war, and afterwards raise the means of its support,
none but wars of just and necessary defence can be
waged. Republics, we are told, indeed, are ambi-
tious,— a seemingly wise remark, devoid of meaning.
Man is ambitious ; and the question is, where will his
ambition be most likely to drive his country into war ;
in a monarchy where he has but to 4 cry havoc, and
let slip the dogs of war,' or in a republic, where he
must get the vote of a strong majority of the nation ?
Let history furnish the answer. The book, which
promised you, in its title, a picture of the progress of
the human family, turns out to be a record, not of the
human family, but of the Macedonian family, the Ju-
lian family, the families of York and Lancaster, of
Lorraine and Bourbon. We need not go to the an-
cient annals to confirm this remark. We need not
speak of those, who reduced Asia and Africa, in the
morning of the world, to a vassallage from which they
have never recovered. We need not dwell on the
more notorious exploits of the Alexanders and the
Csesars, the men who wept for other worlds to visit
with the pestilence of their arms. We need not run
down the bloody line of the dark ages, when the bar-
barous North disgorged her ambitious savages on Eu-

AT CAMBRIDGE, JULY 4, 1826. 367

rope, or when at a later period, barbarous Europe
poured back her holy ruffians on Asia ; we need but
look at the dates of modern history, — the history
of civilized, balanced Europe. We here behold the
ambition of Charles V. involving the continent of Eu-
rope in war, for the first half of the sixteenth century,
arid the fiendlike malignity of Catherine de' Medici
and her kindred distracting it the other half. We see
the haughty and cheerless bigotry of Philip, persever-
ing in a conflict of extermination for one whole age in
the Netherlands, and darkening the English channel
with his armada ; while France prolongs her civil dis-
sensions, because Henry IV. was the twenty-second
cousin of Henry III. We enter the seventeenth cen-
tury, and again find the hereditary pride and bigotry
of the House of Austria wasting Germany and the
neighboring powers with the Thirty Years' war ; and
before the peace of Westphalia is concluded, England
is plunged into the fiery trial of her militant liberties.
Contemporaneously, the civil wars are revived in
France, and the kingdom is blighted by the passions
of Mazarin. The civil wars are healed, and the atro-
cious career of Louis XIV. begins ; a half century of
bloodshed and woe, that stands in revolting contrast
with the paltry pretences of his wars. At length the
peace of Ryswic is made in 1697, and bleeding Eu-
rope throws off the harness and lies down like an ex-
hausted giant to repose. In three years, the testament
of a doating Spanish king gives the signal for the Suc-
cession war; till a cup of tea spilt on Mrs. Masham's
apron, restores peace to the afflicted kingdoms. Mean-
time the madman of the North had broken loose upon
the world, and was running his frantic round. Peace
at length is restored, and with one or two short wars,
it remains unbroken, till, in 1740, the will of Charles
VI. occasions another testamentary contest; and in
the gallant words of the stern but relenting moralist,

The queen, the beauty, sets the world in arms.

Eight years are this time sufficient to exhaust the

368 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

combatants, and the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle is con-
cluded, but, in 1755, the old French war is kindled in
our own wilderness, and through the united operation
of the monopolizing spirit of England, the party in-
trigues of France, and the ambition of Frederic*
spread throughout Europe. The wars of the last ge-
neration I need not name, nor dwell on that signal re-
tribution, by which the political ambition of the cabi-
nets at length conjured up the military ambition of the
astonishing individual, who seems, in our day, to have
risen out of the ranks of the people, to chastise the
privileged orders with that iron scourge, with which
they had so long afflicted mankind ; to gather with his
strong Plebeian hands the fragrance of those palmy
honors, which they had reared for three centuries in
the bloody gardens of their royalty. It may well be
doubted, whether, under a government like ours, one
of all these contests would have taken place. Those
that arose from disputed titles, and bequests of
thrones, could not of course have existed; and
making every allowance for the effect of popular de-
lusion, it seems to me not possible, that a representa-
tive government would have embarked in any of the
wars of ambition and aggrandizement, which fill up
the catalogue.

Who then are these families and individuals — these
royal lanistw — by whom the nations are kept in train-
ing for a long gladiatorial combat? Are they better,
wiser than we ? Look at them in life ; what are they ?
« Kings are fond," says Mr. Burke, no scoffer at thrones,
" kings are fond of low company."* What are they
when gone? Expende Hannibalem. Enter the great
cathedrals of Europe, and contemplate the sepulchres
of the men, who claimed to be the lords of each suc-
cessive generation. Question your own feelings, as
you behold where the Plantagenets and Tudors, the
Stuarts and those of Brunswick, lie mournfully huddled
up in the chapels of Westminster Abbey ; and com-

* Speech on Economical Reform.

AT CAMBRIDGE, JULY 4, 1826. 369

pare those feelings with the homage you pay to Hea-
ven's aristocracy, — the untitled learning, genius, and
wit that moulder by their side. Count over the sixty-
six emperors and princes of the Austrian house, that
lie gathered in the dreary pomp of monumental mar-
ble, in the vaults of the Capuchins at Vienna ; and
weigh the worth of their dust against the calamities
of their Peasants' war, their Thirty Years' war, their
Succession war, their wars to enforce the Pragmatic
Sanction, and of all the other uncouth pretences for
destroying mankind, with which they have plagued the
world.

But the cessation of wars, to which we look forward
as the result of the gradual diffusion of republican
government, is but the commencement of the social
improvements, which cannot but flow from the same
benignant source. It has been justly said that he was
a great benefactor of mankind, who could make two
blades of grass grow, where one grew before. But
our fathers, our fathers were the benefactors of man-
kind, who brought into action such a vast increase of
physical, political, and moral energy ; who have made
not two citizens to live only, but hundreds, yea, un-
numbered thousands to live, and to prosper in re-
gions, which but for their achievements would have
remained for ages unsettled, and to enjoy those rights
of men, which but for their institutions would have
continued to be arrogated, as the exclusive inherit-
ance of a few. I appeal to the fact. I ask any sober
judge of political probability to tell me, whether more
has not been done to extend the domain of civiliza-
tion', in fifty years, since the declaration of independ-
ence, than would have been done in five centuries of
continued colonial subjection. It is not even a matter
of probability ; the king in council had adopted it, as
a maxim of his American policy, that no settlements
in this country should be made beyond the Allegha-
nies; — that the design of Providence in spreading out
the fertile vallev of the Mississippi, should not be
fulfilled.

370 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

I know that it is said, in palliation of the restrictive
influence of European governments, that they are as
good as their subjects can bear. I know it is said,
that it would be useless and pernicious to call on the
half savage and brutified peasantry of many countries,
to take a share in the administration of affairs, by
electing or being elected to office. I know they are
unfit for it; it is the very curse of the system. What
is it that unfits them ? What is it that makes slavish
labor, and slavish ignorance, and slavish stupidity,
their necessary heritage ? Are they not made of the
same Caucasian clay ? Have they not five senses, the
same faculties, the same passions? And is it any
thing but an aggravation of the vice of arbitrary gov-
ernments, that they first deprive men of their rights,
and then unfit them to exercise those rights ; profane-
ly construing the effect into a justification of the
evil?

The influence of our institutions on foreign nations
is — next to their effect on our own condition — the most
interesting question we can contemplate. With our
example of popular government before their eyes, the
nations of the earth will not eventually be satisfied
with any other. With the French revolution as a
beacon to guide them, they will learn, we may hope,
not to embark too rashly on the mounting waves of
reform. The cause, however, of popular government
is rapidly gaining in the world. In England, educa-
tion is carrying it wide and deep into society. On the
continent, written constitutions of governments, nomi-
nally representative, — though as yet, it must be owned,
nominally so alone, — are adopted in eight or ten, late
absolute monarchies; and it is not without good
grounds that we may trust, that the indifference with
which the Christian powers contemplate the sacrifice
of Greece, and their crusade against the constitutions
of Spain, Piedmont and Naples, will satisfy the mass
of thinking men in Europe, that it is time to put an end
to these cruel delusions, and take their own govern-
ment into their own hands.

AT CAMBRIDGE, JULY 4, 1826. 371

But the great triumphs of constitutional freedom, to
which our independence has furnished the example,
have been witnessed in the southern portion of our
hemisphere. Sunk to the last point of colonial degra-
dation, they have risen at once into the organization
of free republics. Their struggle has been arduous ;
and eighteen years of chequered fortune have not yet
brought it to a close. But we must not infer, from
their prolonged agitation, that their independence is
uncertain; that they have prematurely put on the
toga virilis of Freedom. They have not begun too
soon ; they have more to do. Our war of independ-
ence was shorter ; — happily we were contending with
a government, that could not, like that of Spain, pur-
sue an interminable and hopeless contest, in defiance
of the people's will. Our transition to a mature and
well adjusted constitution was more prompt than that
of our sister republics ; for the foundations had long
been settled, the preparation long made. And when
we consider that it is our example, which has aroused
the spirit of Independence from California to Cape
Horn ; that the experiment of liberty, if it had failed
with us, most surely would not have been attempted by
them ; that even now our counsels and acts will ope-
rate as powerful precedents in this great family of re-
publics, we learn the importance of the post which
Providence has assigned us in the world. A wise and
harmonious administration of the public affairs, — a
faithful, liberal and patriotic exercise of the private
duties of the citizen, — while they secure our happiness
at home, will diffuse a healthful influence through the
channels of national communication, and serve the
cause of liberty beyond the Equator and the Andes.
When we show an united, conciliatory, and imposing
front to their rising states, we show them, better than
sounding eulogies can do, the true aspect of an inde-
pendent republic. We give them a living example,
that the fireside policy of a people is like that of the in-

372 MR. EVERETT'S ORATION,

dividual man. As the one, commencing in the pru-
dence, order and industry of the private circle, extends
itself to all the duties of social life, of the family, the
neighborhood, the country ; so the true domestic poli-
cy of the republic, beginning in the wise organization
of its own institutions, pervades its territories with a
vigilant, prudent, temperate administration; and ex-
tends the hand of cordial interest to all the friendly
nations, especially to those which are of the household
of liberty.

It is in this way, that we are to fulfil our destiny in
the world. The greatest engine of moral power, which
human nature knows, is an organized, prosperous
state. All that man, in his individual capacity, can
do — all that he can effect by his fraternities — by his
ingenious discoveries and wonders of art — or by his
influence over others — is as nothing, compared with
the collective, perpetuated influence on human affairs
and human happiness of a well constituted, powerful
commonwealth. It blesses generations with its sweet
influence; — even the barren earth seems to pour out
its fruits under a system where property is secure,
while her fairest gardens are blighted by despotism ; —
men, thinking, reasoning men, abound beneath its be-
nignant sway, — nature enters into a beautiful accord, a
better, purer asiento with man, and guides an industri-
ous citizen to every rood of her smiling wastes ; — and
we see, at length, that what has been called a state of
nature, has been most falsely, calumniously so denomi-
nated ; that the nature of man is neither that of a sa-
vage, a hermit, nor a slave ; but that of a member of a
well ordered family, that of a good neighbor, a free
citizen, a well informed, good man. acting with others
like him. This is the lesson which is taught in the
charter of our independence ; this is the lesson, which
our example is to teach the world.

The epic poet of Rome — the faithful subject of an
absolute prince — in unfolding the duties and destinies

AT CAMBRIDGE, JULY 4, 1826. 3T3

of his countrymen, bids them look down with disdain
on the polished and intellectual arts of Greece, and
deem their arts to be

To rule the nations with imperial sway ;

To spare the tribes that yield ; fight down the proud ;

And force the mood of peace upon the world.

A nobler counsel breathes from the charter of our in-
dependence ; a happier province belongs to our free
republic. Peace we would extend, but by persuasion
and example, — the moral force, by which alone it can
prevail among the nations. Wars we may encounter,
but it is in the sacred character of the injured and the
wronged; to raise the trampled rights of humanity
from the dust ; to rescue the mild form of Liberty,
from her abode among the prisons and the scaffolds of
the elder world, and to seat her in the chair of state
among her adoring children ; — to give her beauty for
ashes ; a healthful action for her cruel agony ; to put
at last a period to her warfare on earth; to tear her
star-spangled banner from the perilous ridges of battle,
and plant it on the rock of ages. There be it fixed
forever, — the power of a free people slumbering in its
folds, their peace reposing in its shade !

VOL. v. 48

A DISCOURSE,

IN COMMEMORATION OF THE LIVES AND SERVICES OF

JOHN ADAMS AND THOMAS JEFFERSON,

DELIVERED IN FANEUIL HALL, BOSTON, AUGUST 2, 1826 :

BY DANIEL WEBSTER.

THIS is an unaccustomed spectacle. For the first
time, fellow-citizens, badges of mourning shroud the
columns and overhang the arches of this Hall. These
walls, which were consecrated, so long ago, to the
cause of American liberty, which witnessed her infant
struggles, and rung with the shouts of her earliest vic-
tories, proclaim, now, that distinguished friends and
champions of the great cause have fallen. It is right
that it should be thus. The tears which flow, and the
honors that are paid, when the Founders of the Re-
public die, give hope that the Republic itself may be
immortal. It is fit, that by public assembly and so-
lemn observance, by anthem and by eulogy, we com-
memorate the services of national benefactors, extol
their virtues, and render thanks to God for eminent
blessings, early given and long continued, to our fa-
vored country.

Adams and Jefferson are no more ; and we are as-
sembled, fellow-citizens, the aged, the middle aged and
the young, by the spontaneous impulse of all, under
the authority of the municipal government, with the
presence of the Chief Magistrate of the Common-
wealth, and others its official representatives, the
university, and the learned societies, to bear our part,
in those manifestations of respect and gratitude which
universally pervade the land. Adams and Jefferson
are no more. On our fiftieth anniversary, the great
day of National Jubilee, in the very hour of public re-
joicing, in the midst of echoing and re-echoing voice/?

MR. WEBSTER'S EULOGY, &c. 375

of thanksgiving, while their own names were on all
tongues, they took their flight, together, to the world
of spirits.

If it be true that no one can safely be pronounced
happy while he lives ; if that event which terminates
life can alone crown its honors and its glory, what
felicity is here ! The great Epic of their lives, how
happily concluded ! Poetry itself has hardly closed
illustrious lives, and finished the career of earthly re-
nown, by such a consummation. If we had the pow-
er, we could not wish to reverse this dispensation of
the Divine Providence. The great objects of life
were accomplished, the drama was ready to be clos-
ed; it has closed; our patriots have fallen; but so
fallen, at such age, with such coincidence, on such a
day, that we cannot rationally lament that that end has
come, which we knew could not be long deferred.

Neither of these great men, fellow-citizens, could
have died, at any time, without leaving an immense
void in. our American society. They have been so in-
timately, and for so lorg a time, blended with the his-
tory of the country, and especially so united, in our
thoughts and recollections, with the events of the
Revolution, that the death of either would have touch-
ed the strings of public sympathy. We should have
felt that one great link, connecting us with former
times, was broken ; that we had lost something more,
as it were, of the presence of the Revolution itself, and
of the act of independence, and were driven on, by
another great remove, from the days of our country's
early, distinction, to meet posterity, and to mix with the
future. Like the mariner, whom the ocean and the
winds carry along, till he sees the stars which have di-
rected his course, and lighted his pathless way, de-
scend, one by one, beneath the rising horizon, we
should have felt that the stream of time had borne us
onward, till another great luminary, whose light had
cheered us, and whose guidance we had followed, had
sunk away from our sight.

But the concurrence of their death, on the anniver-

376 &IR- WEBSTER'S EULOGY ON

sary of independence, has naturally awakened stronger
emotions. Both had been presidents, both had lived
to great age, both were early patriots, and both were
distinguished and ever honored by their immediate
agency in the act of independence. It cannot but
seem striking, and extraordinary, that these two
should live to see the fiftieth year from the date of that
act ; that they should complete that year ; and that
then, on the day which had fast linked forever their
own fame with their country's glory, the heavens
should open to receive them both at once. As their
lives themselves were the gifts of Providence, who is
not willing to recognize in their happy termination, as
well as in their long continuance, proofs that our coun-
try, and its benefactors, are objects of His care ?

Adams and Jefferson, I have said, are no more. As
human beings, indeed, they are no more. They are
no more, as in 1776, bold and fearless advocates of
independence ; no more as on subsequent periods, the
head of the government ; no more as we have recent-
ly seen them, aged and venerable objects of admira-
tion and regard. They are no more. They are dead.
But how little is there, of the great and good, which
can die ! To their country they yet live, and live for-
ever. They live in all that perpetuates the remem-
brance of men on earth ; in the recorded proofs of
their own great actions, in the offspring of their in-
tellect, in the deep engraved lines of public gratitude,
and in the respect and homage of mankind. They
live in their example ; and they live, emphatically, and
will live in the influence which their lives and efforts,
their principles and opinions, now exercise, and will
continue to exercise, on the affairs of men. not only in
their own country, but throughout the civilized world.
A superior and commanding human intellect, a truly
great man, when Heaven vouchsafes so rare a gift, is
not a temporary flame, burning bright for a while, and
then expiring, giving place to returning darkness. It is
rather a spark of fervent heat, as well as radiant light,
with power to enkindle the common mass of human

ADAMS AND JEFFERSON. 377

mind ; so that when it glimmers, in its own decay, and
finally goes out in death, no night follows, but it leaves
the world all light, all on fire, from the potent contact
of its own spirit. Bacon died; but the human under-
standing, roused, by the touch of his miraculous wand,
to a perception of the true philosophy, and the just
mode of inquiring after truth, has kept on its course,
successfully and gloriously. Newton died ; yet the
courses of the spheres are still known, and they yet
move on, in the orbits which he saw, and described
for them, in the infinity of space.

No two men now live, fellow-citizens, perhaps it may
be doubted, whether any two men have ever lived, in
one age, who, more than those we now commemorate,
have impressed their own sentiments, in regard to
politics and government, on mankind, infused their own
opinions more deeply into the opinions of others, or
given a more lasting direction to the current of human
thought. Their work doth not perish with them. The
tree which they assisted to plant, will flourish, although
they water it and protect it no longer ; for it has struck
its roots deep, it has sent them to the very centre;
no storm, not of force to burst the orb, can overturn
it ; its branches spread wide ; they stretch their pro-
tecting arms broader and broader, and its top is destin-
ed to reach the heavens. We are not deceived.
There is no delusion here. No age will come, in
which the American Revolution will appear less than
it is, one of the greatest events in human history. No
age will come, in which it will cease to be seen and
felt,'On either continent, that a mighty step, a great ad-
vance, not only in American affairs, but in human affairs,
was made on the 4th of July, 1776. And no age will
come, we trust, so ignorant or so unjust, as not to see
and acknowledge the efficient agency of these we now
honor, in producing that 'momentous event.

We are not assembled, therefore, fellow-citizens, as
men overwhelmed with calamity by the sudden disrup-
tion of the ties of friendship or affection, or as in des-
pair for the Republic, by the untimely blighting of its

378 MR. WEBSTER'S EULOGY ON

hopes. Death has not surprised us by an unseasona-
ble blow. We have, indeed, seen the tomb close, but
it has closed only over mature years, over long pro-
tracted public service, over the weakness of age, and
over life itself only when the ends of living had been
fulfilled. Those suns, as they rose slowly, and steadily,
amidst clouds and storms, in their ascendant, so they
have not rushed from their meridian, to sink suddenly
in the west. Like the mildness, the serenity, the con-
tinuing benignity of a summer's day, they have gone
down with slow descending, grateful, long lingering
light; and now that they are beyond the visible margin
of the world, good omens cheer us from fc the bright
track of their fiery car !'

There were many points of similarity in the lives and
fortunes of these great men. They belonged to the
same profession, and had pursued its studies and its
practice, for unequal lengths of time indeed, but with
diligence and effect Both were learned and able
lawyers. They were natives and inhabitants, respec-
tively, of those two of the colonies, which, at the re-
volution, were the largest and most powerful, and
which naturally had a lead in the political affairs of the
times. When the colonies became, in some degree,
united, by the assembling of a general congress, they
were brought to act together, in its deliberations, not
indeed at the same time, but both at early periods.
Each had already manifested his attachment to the
cause of the country, as well as his ability to maintain
it by printed addresses, public speeches, extensive
correspondence, and whatever other mode could be
adopted, for the purpose of exposing the encroach-
ments of the British parliament and animating the peo-
ple to a manly resistance. Both were not only decid-
ed, but early friends of Independence. While others
yet doubted, they were resolved ; while others hesitat-
ed, they pressed forward. They were both members
of the committee for preparing the Declaration of In-
dependence, and they constituted the sub-committee,
appointed by the other members to make the draught*

ADAMS AND JEFFERSON. 379

They left their seats in congress, being called to other
public employments, at periods not remote from each
other, although one of them returned to it, afterwards,
for a short time. Neither of them was of the assembly
of great men which formed the present constitution,
and neither was at any time member of congress un-
der its provisions. Both have been public ministers
abroad, both vice-presidents, and both presidents.
These coincidences are now singularly crowned and
completed. They have died, together; and they died
on the anniversary of liberty.

When many of us were last in this place, fellow-citi-
zens, it was on the day of that anniversary. We were
met to enjoy the festivities belonging to the occasion,
and to manifest our grateful homage to our political
fathers.

We did not, we could not here, forget our venerable
neighbor of Quincy. We knew that we were stand-
ing, at a time of high and palmy prosperity, where he
had stood, in the hour of utmost peril ; that we saw
nothing but liberty and security, where he had met
the frown of power; that we were enjoying everything,
where he had hazarded everything; and just and sin-
cere plaudits rose to his name, from the crowds which
filled this area, and hung over these galleries. He
whose grateful duty it was to speak to us, on that day,
of the virtues of our fathers had, indeed, admonished
us that time and years were about to level his venera-
ble frame with the dust. But he bade us hope, that
4 the sound of a nation's joy, rushing from our cities,
ringing from our valleys, echoing from our hills, might
yet break the silence of his aged ear; that the rising
blessings of grateful millions might yet visit, with glad
light, his decaying vision.' Alas ! that vision was then
closing forever. Alas ! the silence which was then
settling on that aged ear, was an everlasting silence !
For, lo! in the very moment of our festivities, his
freed spirit ascended to God who gave it ! Human
aid and human solace terminate at the grave ; or we
would gladly have borne him upward, on a nation's

380 MR. WEBSTER'S EULOGY ON

outspread hands ; we would have accompanied him,
and with the blessings of millions and the prayers
of millions, commended him to the Divine favor.

While still indulging our thoughts on the coinci-
dence of the death of this venerable man with the an-
niversary of independence, we learn that Jefferson, too,
Jias fallen ; and that these aged patriots, these illus-
trious fellow-laborers, had left our world together.
May not such events raise the suggestion that they
are not undesigned, and that Heaven does so order
things, as sometimes to attract strongly the attention,
and excite the thoughts of men ? The occurrence has
added new interest to our anniversary, and will be re-
membered, in all time to come.

The occasion, fellow-citizens, requires some account
of the lives and services of John Adams and Thomas
Jefferson. This duty must necessarily be performed
with great brevity, and in the discharge of it I shall be
obliged to confine myself, principally, to those parts
of their history and character which belonged to them
as public men.

John Adams was born at Quincy, then part of the
ancient town of Braintree, on the 19th day of Octo-
ber, (Old Style,) 1735. He was a descendant of the
Puritans, his ancestors having early emigrated from
England, and settled in Massachusetts. Discovering
early a strong love of reading and of knowledge, to-
gether with marks of great strength and activity of
mind, proper care was taken by his worthy father, to
provide for his education. He pursued his youthful
studies in Braintree, under Mr. Marsh, a teacher whose
fortune it was that Josiah Quincy, Jr. as well as the
subject of these remarks, should receive from him his
instruction in the rudiments of classical literature.
Having been admitted, in 1751, a member of Harvard
College, Mr. Adams was graduated, in course, in 1755 ;
and on the catalogue of that Institution, his name, at
the time of his death, was second among the living
Alumni, being preceded only by that of the venerable
Holyoke. With what degree of reputation he left the

ADAMS AND JEFFERSON. 381

University, is not now precisely known. We know
only that he was distinguished, in a class which num-
bered Locke and Hernenway among its members.
Choosing the law for his profession, he commenced
and prosecuted its studies at Worcester, under the di-
rection of Samuel Putnam, a gentleman whom he has
himself described as an acute man, an able and learned
lawyer, and as in large professional practice at that
time. In 1758, he was admitted to the bar, and com-
menced business in Braintree. He is understood to
have made his first considerable effort, or to have at-
tained his first signal success, at Plymouth, on one of
those occasions which furnish the earliest opportunity
for distinction to many young men of the profession, a
jury trial, and a criminal cause. His business natu-
rally grew with his reputation, and his residence in
the vicinity afforded the opportunity, as his growing
eminence gave the power, of entering on the larger
field of practice which the capital presented. In 1 766,
he removed his residence to Boston, still continuing
his attendance on the neighboring circuits, and not
unfrequently called to remote parts of the Province.
In 1770, his professional firmness was brought to a
test of some severity, on the application of the British
officers and soldiers to undertake their defence, on
the trial of the indictments found against them. on ac-
count of the transactions of the memorable 5th of
March. He seems to have thought, on this occasion,
that a man can no more abandon the proper duties of
his profession, than he can abandon other duties.
The event proved, that as he judged well for his own
reputation, so he judged well, also, for the interest and
permanent fame of his country. The result of that
trial proved, that notwithstanding the high degree of
excitement then existing, in consequence of the mea-
sures of the British government, a jury of Massachu-
setts would not deprive the most reckless enemies,
even the officers of that standing army, quartered
among them, which they so perfectly abhorred, of any
VOL. v. 49

382 MR. WEBSTER'S EULOGY ON

part of that protection which the law, in its mildest and
most indulgent interpretation, afforded to persons ac-
cused of crimes.

Without pursuing Mr. Adams' professional course
further, suffice it to say, that on the first establishment
of the judicial tribunals under the authority of the
State, in 1776, he received an offer of the high and
responsible station of Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court. But he was destined for another and a differ-
ent career. From early life the bent of his mind was
toward politics ; a propensity, which the state of the
times, if it did not create, doubtless very much strength-
ened. Public subjects must have occupied the
thoughts and filled up the conversation in the circles
in which he then moved ; and the interesting ques-
tions, at that time just arising, could not but seize on a
mind, like his, ardent, sanguine and patriotic. The
letter, fortunately preserved, written by him at "Wor-
cester so early as the 12th of October, 1755, is a proof
of very comprehensive views, and uncommon depth of
reflection, in a young man not yet quite twenty. In
this letter he predicted the transfer of power, and the
establishment of a new seat of empire in America ; he
predicted, also, the increase of population in the co-
lonies; and anticipated their naval distinction, and
foretold that all Europe, combined, could not subdue
them. All this is said, not on a public occasion, or
for effect, but in the style of sober and friendly corres-
pondence, as the result of his own thoughts. ' I some-
times retire,' said he, at the close of the letter, <• and
laying things together form some reflections pleasing
to myself. The produce of one of these reveries you
have read above.' This prognostication, so early in
his own life, so early in the history of the country, of
independence, of vast increase of numbers, of naval
force, of such augmented power as might defy all Eu-
rope, is remarkable. It is more remarkable, that its
author should live to see fulfilled to the letter, what
could have seemed to others, at the time, but the ex-
travagance of youthful fancy. His earliest political

ADAMS AND JEFFERSON. 383

feelings were thus strongly American ; and from this
ardent attachment to his native soil he never departed.

While still living at Quincy, and at the age of twen-
ty-four, Mr. Adams was present, in this town, on the
argument before the Supreme Court respecting Writs
of Assistance, and heard the celebrated and patriotic
speech of James Otis. Unquestionably, that was a
masterly performance. No flighty declamation about
liberty, no superficial discussion of popular topics, it
was a learned, penetrating, convincing, constitutional
argument, expressed in a strain of high arid resolute
patriotism. He grasped the question, then pending
between England and her Colonies, with the strength
of a lion ; and if he sometimes sported, it was only be-
cause the lion himself is sometimes playful. Its suc-
cess appears to have been as great as its merits, and
its impression was widely felt. Mr. Adams himself
seems never to have lost the feeling it produced, and
to have entertained constantly the fullest conviction of
its important effects. 4 1 do say,' he observes, ' in the
most solemn manner, that Mr. Otis' Oration against
Writs of Assistance, breathed into this nation the
breath of life.'

In 1765 Mr. Adams laid before the public what I
suppose to be his first printed performance, except es-
says for the periodical press, a Dissertation on the
Canon and Feudal Law. The object of this work
was to show that our New England ancestors, in con-
senting to exile themselves from their native land,
were actuated, mainly, by the desire of delivering
themselves from the power of the hierarchy, and from
the monarchical and aristocratical political systems of
the other continent ; and to make this truth bear, with
effect, on the politics of the times. Its tone is uncom-
monly bold and animated, for that period. He calls
on the people, not only to defend, but to study and un-
derstand their rights and privileges ; urges earnestly
the necessity of diffusing general knowledge, invokes
the clergy and the bar, the colleges and academies,
and all others who have the ability and the means, to

384 MR. WEBSTER'S EULOGY ON

expose the insidious designs of arbitrary power, to re-
sist its approaches, and to be persuaded that there is
a settled design on foot to enslave all America. ' Be
it remembered,' says the author, 4 that liberty must, at
all hazards, be supported. We have a right, to it, de-
rived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers
have earned it, and bought it for us, at the expense of
their ease, their estate, their pleasure and their blood.
And liberty cannot be preserved without a general
knowledge among the people, who have a right, from
the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their
great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given
them understandings, and a desire to know ; but be-
sides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unaliena-
ble, indefeasible right to that most dreaded and envied
kind of knowledge, I mean of the character and con-
duct of their rulers. Rulers are no more than attor-
nies, agents, and trustees of the people; and if the
cause, the interest and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or
wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to re-
voke the authority, that they themselves have deputed,
and to constitute other and better agents, attoruies and
trustees.'

The citizens of this town conferred on Mr. Adams
his first political distinction, arid clothed him with his
first political trust, by electing him one of their repre-
sentatives, in 1770. Before this time he had become
extensively known throughout the province, as well by
the part he had acted in relation to public affairs, as
by the exercise of his professional ability. He was
among those who took the deepest interest in the con-
troversy with England, and whether in or out of the
Legislature, his time and talents were alike devoted
to the cause. In the years 1773 and 1774 he was
chosen a counsellor, by the members of the General
Court, but rejected by Governor Hutchinson, in the
former of those years, and by Governor Gage in the
latter.

The time was now at hand, however, when the af-
fairs of the colonies urgently demanded united coun-

ADAMS AND JEFFERSON. 385

eils. An open rupture with the parent State appeared
inevitable, and it was but the dictate of prudence, that
those who were united by a common interest and a
common danger, should protect that interest and
guard against that danger, by united efforts. A Gene-
ral Congress of Delegates from all the colonies, hav-
ing been proposed and agreed to, the House of Rep-
resentatives, on the 17th of June, 1774, elected James
Bowdoin, Thomas Gushing, Samuel Adams, John
Adams, and Robert Treat Paine, delegates from Mas-
sachusetts. This appointment was made at Salem,
where the General Court had been convened by Gov-
ernor Gage, in the last hour of the existence of a
House of Representatives under the provincial Char-
ter. While engaged in this important business, the
Governor having been informed of what was passing,
sent his secretary with a message dissolving the Gene-
ral Court. The secretary finding the door locked, di-
rected the messenger to go in and inform the speaker
that the secretary was at the door with a message from
the Governor. The messenger returned, and inform-
ed the secretary that the orders of the House were
that the doors should be kept fast ; whereupon the
secretary soon after read a proclamation, dissolving
the General Court upon the stairs. Thus terminated,
forever, the actual exercise of the political power of
England in or over Massachusetts. The four last
named delegates accepted their appointments, and
took their seats in Congress, the first day of its
meeting, September 5, 1774, in Philadelphia.

The proceedings of the first Congress are well
known, and have been universally admired. It is in
vain that we would look for superior proofs of wisdom,
talent and patriotism. Lord Chatham said, that for
himselt; he must declare, that he had studied and
admired the free states of antiquity, the master states
of the world, but that for solidity of reasoning, force of
sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion, no body of men
could stand in preference to this Congress. It is hard-
ly inferior praise to say, that no production of that

386 MR. WEBSTER'S EULOGY ON

great man himself can be pronounced superior to seve-
ral of the papers published as the proceedings of this
most able, most firm, most patriotic assembly. There
is indeed, nothing superior to them in the range of po-
litical disquisition. They not only embrace, illustrate,
and enforce every thing which political philosophy,
the love of liberty, and the spirit of free inquiry had
antecedently produced, but they add new and striking
views of their own, and apply the whole, with irresisti-
ble force, in support of the cause which had drawn
them together.

Mr. Adams was a constant attendant on the delibera-
tions of this body, and bore an active part in its im-
portant measures. He was of the committee to state
the rights of the colonies, and of that also which report-
ed the address to the king.

As it was in the Continental Congress, fellow-citi-
zens, that those whose deaths have given rise to this
occasion, were first brought together, and called on to
unite their industry and their ability, in the service of
the country, let us now turn to the other of these dis-
tinguished men, and take a brief notice of his life, up
to the period when he appeared within the walls of
Congress.

Thomas Jefferson, descended from ancestors who
had been settled in Virginia for some generations, was
born near the spot on which he died, in the county of
Albemarle, on the 2d of April, (Old Style,) 1743. His
youthful studies were pursued in the neighborhood of
his father's residence, until he was removed to the
college of William and Mary, the highest honors of
which he in due time received. Having left the col-
lege with reputation, he applied himself to the study of
the law, under the tuition of George Wythe, one of the
highest judicial names of which that State can boast.
At an early age he was elected a member of the Legis-
lature, in which he had no sooner appeared than he
distinguished himself, by knowledge, capacity, and
promptitude.

Mr. Jefferson appears to have been imbued with an

ADAMS AND JEFFERSON. 387

early love of letters and science, and to have cherished
a strong disposition to pursue these objects. To the
physical sciences, especially, and to ancient classic
literature, he is understood to have had a warm at-
tachment, and never entirely to have lost sight of them,
in the midst of the busiest occupations. But the times
.were times for action, rather than for contemplation.
The country was to be defended, and to be saved, be-
fore it could be enjoyed. Philosophic leisure and lite-
rary pursuits, and even the objects of professional at-
tention, were all necessarily postponed to the urgent
calls of the public service. The exigency of the coun-
try made the same demand on Mr. Jefferson that it
made on others who had the ability and the disposition
to serve it; and he obeyed the call; thinking and feel-
ing, in this respect, with the great Roman orator;
Quis enim est tarn cupidus in perspicienda cognoscen-
daque rerum natura, ut, si ei tractanti contemplantique
res cognitiorie dignissimas subito sit allatum periculum
discrimenque patrise, cui subvenire opitularique possit,
non ilia omnia relinquat atque abjiciat, etiam si dinu-
inerare se Stellas, aut metiri mundi magnitudinem
posse arbitretur ?

Entering, with all his heart, into the cause of liberty,
his ability, patriotism, and power with the pen naturally
drew upon him a large participation in the most import-
ant concerns. Wherever he was, there was found a
soul devoted to the cause, power to defend and main-
tain it, and willingness to incur all its hazards. In 1774
he published a Summary View of the Rights of Bri-
tish America, a valuable production among those in-
tended to show the dangers which threatened the liber-
ties of the country, and to encourage the people in
their defence. In June 1775 he was elected a member
of the Continental Congress, as successor to Peyton
Randolph, who had retired on account of ill health,
and took his seat in that body on the 21st of the same
month.

And now, fellow-citizens, without pursuing the biog-
raphy of these illustrious men further, for the present,

388 MR. WEBSTER'S EULOGY ON

let us turn our attention to the most prominent act of
their lives, their participation in the Declaration of In-
dependence.

Preparatory to the introduction of that important
measure, a committee, at the head of which was Mr.
Adams, had reported a resolution, which Congress
adopted the 10th of May, recommending, in substance,
to all the colonies which had not already established
governments suited to the exigencies of their affairs, to
adopt such government, as would, in the opinion of
the representatives of the people, best conduce to the
happiness and safety of their constituents in particular,
and America in general.

This significant vote was soonibllowed by the direct
proposition, which Richard Henry Lee had the honor
to submit to Congress,, by resolution, on the 7th day of
June. The published journal does not expressly state
it, but there is no doubt, 1 suppose, that this resolution
was in the same words, when originally submitted by
Mr. Lee, as when finally passed. Having been discuss-
ed, on Saturday the 8th, arid Monday the 10th of June,
this resolution was on the last mentioned day postpon-
ed, for further consideration, to the first day of July;
and, at the same time it was voted, that a committee
be appointed to prepare a Declaration, to the effect of
the resolution. This committee was elected by ballot,
on the following day, and consisted of Thomas Jeffer-
son, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman,
and Robert R. Livingston.

It is usual, when committees are elected by ballot,
that their members are arranged, in order, according
to the number of votes which each has received, Mr.
Jefferson, therefore, had received the highest, and
Mr. Adams the next highest number of votes. The
difference is said to have been but of a single vote.
Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Adams, standing thus at the
head of the committee, were requested by the other
members, to act as a sub-committee, to prepare the
draft; and Mr. Jefferson drew up the paper. The
original draft, as brought by him from his study, and

ADAMS AND JEFFERSON. 389

submitted to the other members of the committee,
with interlineations in the hand-writing of Dr. Frank-
lin, and others in that of Mr. Adams, was in Mr. Jeffer-
son's possession at the time of his death. The merit
of this paper is Mr. Jefferson's. Some changes were
made in it, on the suggestion of other members of the
committee, and others by Congress while it was under
discussion. But none of them altered the tone, the
frame, the arrangement, or the general character of the
instrument. As a composition, the declaration is Mr.
Jefferson's. It is the production of his mind, and
the high honor of it belongs to him, clearly and
absolutely.

It has sometimes been said, as if it were a deroga-
tion from the merits of this paper, that it contains
nothing new ; that it only states grounds of proceed-
ing, and presses topics of argument, which had often
been stated and pressed before. But it was not the
object of the declaration to produce any thing new.
It was not to invent reasons for independence, but to
state those which governed the Congress. For great
and sufficient causes, it was proposed to declare inde-
pendence; and the proper business of the paper to be
drawn, was to set forth those causes, and justify the
authors of the measure, in any event of fortune, to the
country, and to posterity. The cause of American in-
dependence, moreover, was now to be presented to the
world, in such manner, if it might so be, as to engage
its sympathy, to command its respect, to attract its
admiration; and in an assembly of most able and dis-
tinguished men, Thomas Jefferson had the high honor
of being the selected advocate of this cause. To say
that he performed his great work well, would be doing
him injustice. To say that he did excellently well,
admirably well, would be inadequate and halting
praise. Let us rather say, that he so discharged the
duty assigned him, that all Americans may well rejoice
that the work of drawing the title deed of their liber-
ties devolved on his hands.

With all its merits, there are those who have thought

VOL. v. 50

390 MR. WEBSTER'S EULOGY ON

that there was one thing in the declaration to be re-
gretted ; and that is, the asperity and apparent anger
with which it speaks of the person of the king; the in-
dustrious ability with which it accumulates and charges
upon him, all the injuries which the colonies had suf-
fered from the mother country. Possibly some degree
of injustice, now or hereafter, at home or abroad, may
be done to the character of Mr. Jefferson, if this part of
the declaration be not placed in its proper light. An-
ger or resentment, certainly, much less personal re-
proach and invective, could not properly find place, in
a composition of such high dignity, and of such lofty
and permanent character.

A single reflection on the original ground of dis-
pute, between England and the colonies, is sufficient
to remove ariy unfavorable impression, in this respect.

The inhabitants of all the colonies, while colonies,
admitted themselves bound by their allegiance to the
king; but they disclaimed, altogether, the authority of
parliament; holding themselves, in this respect, to re-
semble the condition of Scotland and Ireland, before
the respective unions of those kingdoms with England,
when they acknowledged allegiance to the same king,
but each had its separate legislature. The tie, there-
fore, which our revolution was to break, did not sub-
sist between us and the British parliament, or between
us and the British government, in the aggregate ; but
directly between us and the king himself. The colo-
nies had never admitted themselves subject to parlia-
ment. That was precisely the point of the original
controversy. They had uniformly denied that parlia-
ment had authority to make laws for them. There
was, therefore, no subjection to parliament to be thrown
off.* But allegiance to the king did exist, and had

* This question, of the power of parliament over the colonies,
was discussed with singular ability, by Gov. Hutchinson on the one
side, and the house of representatives of Massachusetts on the other,
in 1773. The argument of the House is in the form of an answer
to the governor's message, and was reported by Mr. Samuel Adams,
Mr. Hancock, Mr. Hawley, Mr. Bowers, Mr. Hobson, Mr. Foster.

ADAMS AND JEFFERSON. 391

been uniformly acknowledged; and down to 1775 the
most solemn assurances had been given that it was
not intended to break that allegiance, or to throw it off.
Therefore, as the direct object, and only effect of the
declaration, according to the principles on which the
controversy had been maintained, on our part, was to
sever the tie of allegiance which bound us to the king,
it was properly and necessarily founded on acts of the
crown itself, as its justifying causes. Parliament is not
so much as mentioned, in the whole instrument.
When odious and oppressive acts are referred to,
it is done by charging the king with confederating,
with others, 4 in pretended acts of legislation ;' the ob-
ject being, constantly, to hold the king himself directly
responsible for those measures which were the grounds
of separation. Even the precedent of the English
revolution was not overlooked, and in this case, as well
as in that, occasion was found to say that the king had
abdicated the government. Consistency with the
principles upon which resistance began, and with all
the previous state papers issued by Congress, required
that the declaration should be bottomed on the mis-
government of the king ; and therefore it was properly
framed with that aim and to that end. The king was
known, indeed, to have acted, as in other cases, by his
ministers, and with his parliament; but as our ances-
tors had never admitted themselves subject either to
ministers or to parliament, there were no reasons to be
given for now refusing obedience to their authority.
This clear and obvious necessity of founding the decla-
ration on the misconduct of the king himself, gives to
that instrument its personal application, and its charac-
ter of direct and pointed accusation.

The declaration having been reported to Congress,

Mr. Phillips and Mr. Thayer. As the power- of the parliament had
been acknowledged, so far at least as to effect us by laws of trade, it
was not easy to settle the line of distinction. It was thought how-
ever to be very clear, that the charters of the colonies had exempted
them from the general legislation of the British parliament. See
Massachusetts State Papers, p. 351.

392 MR. WEBSTER'S EULOGY ON

by the committee, the resolution itself was taken up
and debated on the first day of July, and again on the
second, on which last day it was agreed to and adopt-
ed, in these words,

Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of
right ought to be, free and independent states ; that
they are absolved from all allegiance to the British
crown, and that all political connexion between them,
and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, to-
tally dissolved.

Having thus passed the main resolution, Congress
proceeded to consider the reported draft of the decla-
ration. It was discussed on the second, and third, and
fourth days of the month, in committee of the whole ;
and on the last of those days, being reported from that
committee, it received the final approbation and sanc-
tion of Congress. It was ordered, at the same time,
that copies be sent to the several States, and that it
be proclaimed at the head of the army. The declara-
tion thus published, did not bear the names of the
members, for as yet it had not been signed by them.
It was authenticated, like other papers of the Con-
gress, by the signatures of the President and Secretary.
On the 19th of July, as appears by the secret journal,
Congress ; Resolved, that the declaration, passed on
the fourth, be fairly engrossed on parchment, with the
title and style of " The unanimous declaration of the
Thirteen United States of America;" and that the
same, when engrossed, be signed by every member of
Congress.' Arid on the second day of August, follow-
ing, 4 the declaration, being engrossed and compared
at the table, was signed by the members.' So that
it happens, fellow-citizens, that we pay these honors to
their memory, on the anniversary of that day, on which
these great men actually signed their names to the de-
claration. The declaration was thus made, that is, it
passed, and was adopted, as an act of Congress, on
the fourth of July ; it was then signed and certified by
the president and secretary, like other acts. The
fourth of July, therefore, is the anniversary of the

ADAMS AND JEFFERSON. 393

declaration. But the signatures of the members pre-
sent were made to it, being then engrossed on parch-
ment, on the second day of August. Absent members
afterwards signed, as they came in; and indeed it
bears the names of some who were not chosen mem-
bers of Congress, until after the fourth of July. The
interest belonging to the subject, will be sufficient, I
hope, to justify these details.

The Congress of the Revolution, fellow-citizens, sat
with closed doors, and no report of its debates was
ever taken. The discussion, therefore, which accom-
panied this great measure, has never been preserved,
except in memory, and by tradition. But it is, I be-
lieve, doing no injustice to others, to say, that the ge-
neral opinion was, and uniformly has been, that in de-
bate, on the side of independence, John Adams had no
equal. The great author of the declaration himself
has expressed that opinion uniformly and strongly.
; John Adams,' said he, in the hearing of him who has
now the honor to address you, 4 John Adams was our
Colossus on the floor. Not graceful, not eloquent, not
always fluent, in his public addresses, he yet came out
with a power, both of thought and of expression, which
moved us from our seats.'

For the part which he was here to perform, Mr.
Adams doubtless was eminently fitted. He possessed
a bold spirit, which disregarded danger, and a san-
guine reliance on the goodness of the cause, and the
virtues of the people, which led him to overlook all
obstacles. His character, too, had been formed in
troubled times. He had been rocked in the early
storms of the controversy, and had acquired a decision
and a hardihood, proportioned to the severity of the
discipline which he had undergone.

He not only loved the American cause devoutly, but
had studied and understood it. It was all familiar to
him. He had tried his powers, on the questions which
it involved, often, and in various ways ; and had brought
to their consideration whatever of argument or illus-
tration the history of his own country, the history of

394 MR. WEBSTER'S EULOGY ON

England, or the stores of ancient or of legal learning
could furnish. Every grievance, enumerated in the long
catalogue of the declaration, had been the subject of
his discussion, and the object of his remonstrance and
reprobation. From 1760, the colonies, the rights of
the colonies, the liberties of the colonies, and the
wrongs inflicted on the colonies, had engaged his con-
stant attention ; and it has surprised those, who have
had the opportunity of observing, with what full re-
membrance, and with what prompt recollection, he
could refer, in his extreme old age, to every act of
Parliament affecting the colonies, distinguishing and
stating their respective titles, sections and provisions ;
and to all the colonial memorials, remonstrances,
and petitions, with whatever else belonged to the in-
timate and exact history of the times from that year
to 1775. It was in his own judgment, between these
years, that the American people came to a full un-
derstanding and thorough knowledge of their rights,
and to a fixed resolution of maintaining them ; and
bearing himself an active part in all important trans-
actions, the controversy with England being then, in
effect, the business of his life, facts, dates and particu-
lars made an impression which was never effaced.
He was prepared, therefore, by education and disci-
pline, as well as by natural talent and natural tempera-
ment, for the part which he was now to act.

The eloquence of Mr. Adams resembled his gene-
ral character, and formed, indeed, a part of it. It was
bold, manly, and energetic ; and such the crisis requir-
ed. When public bodies are to be addressed on mo-
mentous occasions, when great interests are at stake,
and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable, in
speech, farther than it is connected with high intel-
lectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and
earnestness are the qualities which produce convic-
tion. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in
speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and
learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain.
Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way?

ADAMS AND JEFFERS